[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6304-6305]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               IRAQ FORUM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, just a few hours ago, I heard moving 
testimonials about the impact of the Iraq war on real people, real 
families and real communities, both American and Iraqi. I organized a 
forum precisely to get beyond the statistics, the strategy, and the 
abstractions, to understand the devastating human cost of this war.

[[Page 6305]]

  We heard from Charlie Anderson, a former marine who suffers from 
post-traumatic stress disorder and now is a regional coordinator for 
Iraq Veterans Against the War. He spoke of the Government of the United 
States having failed the men and women it sent to war.
  He said, ``I was completely untrained and unprepared for what I 
experienced in Iraq.''
  He told us, ``In the 7 years preceding my deployment to the Middle 
East . . . I had not set foot in the desert or had any training on how 
to fight or survive there. I had fired my 9-millimeter service pistol 
exactly once.''
  And this is the part that blew my mind, Mr. Speaker: Mr. Anderson 
added that after firing his weapon during one ambush, he said, ``I was 
told I would not be issued replacement ammunition because there was 
none to be had. My platoon sergeant told me `do not shoot unless your 
death is imminent . . .'''
  Can you imagine that? The mighty United States military, the greatest 
fighting force in the world, essentially rationing bullets?
  Dahlia Wasfi, a doctor who is half Jewish and half Iraqi, offered a 
powerful historical analogy. She spoke of her mother's relatives being 
driven from their native Austria to avoid Nazi concentration camps. 
``Never again'' is the refrain we use when talking about the Holocaust. 
She then spoke of her father's relatives who are ``not living, but 
dying, under the occupation of this administration's deadly foray in 
Iraq.''
  She went on: ``From the lack of security to the lack of basic 
supplies to the lack of electricity to the lack of potable water to the 
lack of jobs to the lack of reconstruction to the lack of life, 
liberty, and pursuit of happiness, they are worse off now than before 
we invaded. `Never again' should apply to them, too.''
  An Iraqi civil engineer named Faiza also spoke to us. She fled 
occupied Iraq last summer after her son, a student, was detained for 
several days by the Ministry of the Interior without any charges being 
filed.
  ``He has a beard; so he was a suspect terrorist,'' she said.
  Although they said he had committed no crimes, his family had to pay 
thousands of dollars to secure his release. How is that for the 
transformation of power to freedom?
  Now she and her family are living as exiles in Jordan, driven away 
from everything that was once familiar to them. But the only other 
choice was to live in a country whose infrastructure has been 
completely torn down and never rebuilt.
  Mr. Speaker, in the name of these three brave souls, for the sake of 
human decency if nothing else, it is time to end this war, bring our 
troops home, and give Iraq back to the Iraqi people.

                          ____________________