[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 304-305]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein is dead. So are 3,000 
Americans. The regime in Iraq has been changed; yet victory will not be 
declared. Not only does the war go on; it is about to escalate. 
Obviously, the turmoil in Iraq is worse than ever and most Americans no 
longer are willing to tolerate the costs, both human and economic, 
associated with this war.
  We have been in Iraq for 45 months. Many more Americans have been 
killed in Iraq than were killed in the first 45 months in Vietnam. I 
was in the U.S. Air Force in 1965, and I remember well when President 
Johnson announced a troop surge in Vietnam to hasten victory. That war 
went on for another decade. And by the time we finally finished that 
war and got out, 60,000 Americans had died. We obviously should have 
gotten out 10 years sooner. Troop surge then meant serious escalation.
  The election is over and Americans have spoken: enough is enough. 
They want the war ended and our troops brought home. But the opposite 
is likely to occur. With bipartisan support, up to 50,000 troops may 
well be sent. The goal no longer is to win. Now it is simply to secure 
Baghdad. So much has been spent with so little to show for it.
  Who possibly benefits from escalating chaos in Iraq? Neoconservatives 
unabashedly have written about how chaos presents opportunities for 
promoting their goals. Certainly Osama bin Laden has benefited from the 
turmoil in Iraq, as have Iranian Shiites who are now in a better 
position to take control of southern Iraq.
  Yes, Saddam Hussein is dead, and only Sunnis mourn. The Shiites and 
Kurds celebrate his death, as do the Iranians and especially bin Laden, 
all enemies of Saddam Hussein. We have performed a tremendous service 
for both bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, and it will cost us plenty. The 
violent reaction to our complicity in the execution of Saddam Hussein 
is yet to come.
  Three thousand American military personnel are dead. More than 22,000 
are wounded, and tens of thousands will be psychologically traumatized 
by their tours of duty in Iraq. Little concern is given to the hundreds 
of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in this war. We have spent $400 
billion so far with no end in sight. This money we do not have. It is 
all borrowed from countries like China that increasingly succeed in the 
global economy while we drain wealth from our citizens through heavy 
taxation and insidious inflation. Our manufacturing base is now nearly 
extinct. Where the additional U.S. troops in Iraq will come from is 
anybody's guess, but surely they won't be redeployed from Japan, Korea, 
or Europe.
  We at least must pretend that our bankrupt empire is intact, but then 
again, the Soviet empire appeared intact in 1988. Some Members of 
Congress intent on equitably distributing the suffering among all 
Americans want to bring back the draft. Administration officials 
vehemently deny making any concrete plans for a draft.
  But why should we believe this? Look what happened when so many 
believed the reasons given for our preemptive invasion of Iraq. 
Selective Service officials admit running a check of their list of 
available young men. If the draft is reinstated, we probably will 
include young women as well to serve the God of equality. Conscription 
is slavery, plain and simple, and it was made illegal under the 13th 
amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude. One may well be 
killed as a military draftee, which makes conscription a very dangerous 
kind of enslavement.
  Instead of testing the efficacy of the Selective Service System and 
sending more troops off to a war that we are losing, we ought to revive 
our love of liberty. We should repeal the Selective

[[Page 305]]

Service Act. A free society should never depend on compulsory 
conscription to defend itself.
  We get into trouble by not following the precepts of liberty or 
obeying the rule of law. Preemptive, undeclared wars fought under false 
pretenses are a road to disaster. If a full declaration of war by 
Congress had been demanded as the Constitution requires, this war never 
would have been fought.
  If we did not create credit out of thin air, as the Constitution 
prohibits, we never would have convinced taxpayers to support this war 
directly by increased taxation. How long this financial charade can go 
on is difficult to judge, but when the end comes, it will not go 
unnoticed by any American.

                          ____________________