[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8768-8769]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2300
                            PROGRESS IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, before the gentlelady leaves, I want to thank 
her for I think just a very moving and important message about what 
Israelis are faced with. I just thank her for that message.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like specifically to talk about Iraq and to say 
that in the 12 visits I have had to Iraq, when I ask Iraqis what their 
biggest fear is, it almost always is this: ``That you will leave us.'' 
Then they might say, ``That you will leave us before we can grab hold 
of democracy.''
  Well, I have to say, frankly, that is one of my biggest fears. I am 
not afraid that we will see the war in Iraq lost in Iraq. I am most 
fearful that we will see the war in Iraq lost here at home.
  It would seem a little surprising to say that I have seen significant 
progress in Iraq, because people see the way we were in April 2003 and 
they think it was so exciting, and they compare it to April 2003. But, 
unfortunately, after April 2003 there was a significant decline in what 
took place in Iraq.
  First we allowed the looting. And to Iraqis, they would ask me when I 
would go there, why did you allow people to trash our country? These 
were not all Iraqis who were doing it. These were people who were 
looting. And Americans were just standing by and allowed this to 
happen. And they believed, frankly, that we wanted it to happen, 
because they believed that we could have prevented it had we wanted to.
  And then we proceeded to disband their army, their border patrol and 
their police and leave 24 million Iraqis totally and completely 
defenseless in a country the size of California.
  And then what did we do? We said to 150,000 coalition forces, 
primarily Americans, some Brits, that you had to be the police, the 
border patrol and the army in a country the size of California with 24 
million people.
  That was basically an impossible task. And so what I saw happen in 
April 2003 is that things just kept getting worse. They were worse in 
December 2003. And even worse by April 2004. But then, at that point, 
we had started to reverse the slide. We reversed it by beginning to 
train their police, their border patrol and their army.
  And we began to see a change when we transferred power in June of 
2004. And Iraqis started to take ownership. And so when I kept going 
back every 3 to 4 months, I kept seeing progress. And then by 2005, I 
was there for the elections when they took place in January of 2005. It 
is just historic and moving, every time I think about it. Iraqis

[[Page 8769]]

came out and voted. The Sunnis did not, but the Shiias and the Kurds 
did.
  They formed a government, and they created a constitutional 
convention and invited Sunnis in. They did not participate in the 
voting, so they were not represented, but they were invited in. And 
they created a constitution. They voted on that constitution by 
October.
  And I was told by the UN that it would be one of the fairest 
elections with the best participation, put our elections to shame, and 
frankly it did. Mubarak of Egypt, the president, said they would not 
accept their constitution. 79 percent ratified it. It was 
extraordinary.
  And now they had this constitution and a third election in just 11 
months. And 76 percent of 100 percent of the eligible voters voted. Now 
if you get 65 percent voting in our country, that is 65 percent of the 
two-thirds that bother to register. So it was an amazing event.
  They chose a government. But Jafari, the prime minister who was 
selected by the Shiias was not liked by the Sunnis and the Kurds, and 
the minority said no to the majority, and the majority said we rule. 
And the minority side minority rights. And they went back and forth, 
and for 3 months we had this standoff.
  The minority was able to demonstrate minority rights, and the 
majority was able to say we accept your minority rights. That is 
maturity taking place.
  Now you have a new prime minister, and this new prime minister is 
reaching out to Sunnis, Shiias and Kurds. When I ask a Kurd if they are 
a Kurd or a Shiia, or Shiia if they are Shiia or Sunni, they will say, 
I am a Sunni, but I am married to a Shiia, or I am a Shiia and my son 
is married to a Sunni.
  And if I ask a Kurd, they will say I am Kurd, but you do not seem to 
understood. Kurds are Sunnis. We tend to divide them up more than they 
do. My biggest fear is that in spite of the progress that is being 
made, huge progress, in spite of the fact that Sunni radicals tried to 
ignite the country in sectarian violence, you only saw that sectarian 
violence in two places, Baghdad and Ramadi, and actually Basra.
  They held off. This is an amazing thing that we are seeing take 
place. The Iraqis deserve our staying the course with them. They did 
not attack us, we attacked them. We disbanded their army, their police 
and their border patrol. It is absolutely imperative, absolutely 
imperative that we not leave before they have their police, their 
border patrol, and their army to protect themselves.

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