[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11521-11522]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            IRAQ RESOLUTION

  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, I do not think I am going to take the full 5 
minutes, but I have been in this House Chamber almost all day and I 
hear these arguments that we don't have a plan to end the war in Iraq 
and succeed, and that is just simply not true. It is not true at all.
  The fact is the plan was wrong in the sense that there was the 
anticipation that it would happen more easily. But the plan is very 
clear. It is not simple. It requires that the Iraqis have their own 
police, their own border patrol, and their own army in order to secure 
themselves. And since we did not allow for their police to be restood, 
we had to start from scratch and train them.
  And it is simply not possible to train a police and border patrol, an 
army, in 1 year or 2 or 3. There are 26 million Iraqis in a country the 
size of California. But every day we train more and more of them, so 
that now they control about 42 percent of the land that includes 42 
percent of the population.
  So as we continue with our plan, as we continue to train more and 
more Iraqis, we are able to move our troops out and move their troops 
in. We are able to move their police in and our troops out. We are able 
to move their border patrol in and our troops out.
  Now, it is clear that they do not have the logistics, so we will 
still have to be there later, but not in the numbers that we have now. 
That is all part of the plan; to train their troops, train their border 
patrol, train their army, and allow them to take our place.
  What we object to is leaving prematurely. And if you ask an Iraqi 
what their biggest fear is, and having been there 12 times I have 
spoken to a lot of them, it is basically the same thing, it is that you 
will leave us; that you will leave us before we can take hold of 
democracy and before we can defend ourselves. That is their biggest 
fear. Some of them even say, like you did in Vietnam. And some of them 
will make reference to what they hear on CNN or what they hear about 
elected officials who say we need to get out, we need to have some kind 
of artificial timetable.

                              {time}  2315

  Thank goodness George Washington didn't have Congress telling him he 
had to have a timetable to beat the Brits. Thank goodness when all the 
generals criticized Abraham Lincoln, we didn't say, well, the generals 
are against Abraham Lincoln, he doesn't have a plan, we better just 
fold our tent. Thank goodness that didn't happen.
  The bottom line for me is very clear. We may have been wrong about 
weapons of mass destruction, and for that the President loses 
credibility, and people like me do, and people on the other side of the 
aisle who voted for going into Iraq, and now pretend like they didn't, 
we all lose our credibility there. But we don't lose our credibility 
with this: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He used 
these weapons on his own people and neighbors. He didn't abide by the 
agreement that stopped us from going into Baghdad. He has now been 
removed. Thank God.
  The Iraqi people have a democracy that is flourishing and is 
extraordinarily impressive. Three elections have allowed the Iraqis to 
form a government that created a Constitution, adopt a Constitution, 
and then elect a government under that Constitution.
  All the Iraqis are asking from this Congress is you came in, you 
removed our security people, you have given us a taste of democracy, 
let us live that democracy and let us have the capability to protect 
ourselves before you leave. That's our plan.

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