[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 641-643]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         ENDING THE WAR IN IRAQ

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. PETER A. DeFAZIO

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, January 9, 2007

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, tomorrow the President will announce he 
has yet another new strategy for victory in Iraq. This strategy will 
come just over a year after he released his last strategy for victory 
in Iraq, which was completed in November 2005.
  According to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, since the 
President released his last plan, more than 900 U.S. troops have been 
killed in Iraq, more than 2,200 Iraqi police and military forces have 
also been killed. The number of Iraqi civilians killed has risen from 
1,778 in January 2006 to nearly 3,300 in December 2006. The number of 
multiple fatality bombings has increased from 41 in November 2005 to 69 
in December 2006.
  In other words, by virtually every measure, the violence in Iraq is 
worse this year than last year, the political situation is more 
volatile and deteriorating by the day and the civil war is expanding.
  After nearly four years, after more than 3,000 U.S troops have been 
killed, after more than 22,500 U.S. troops have been injured--nearly 
half of whom have been injured severely enough that they cannot return 
to duty--and after more than $300 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money has 
been spent with no benefit to U.S. national security and with little 
progress toward stabilizing Iraq, what is the President's response? All 
indications are that he will propose to compound the failure by 
escalating the war, putting tens of thousands of more American lives at 
risk, and borrowing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars more in 
order to prosecute a war that cannot be won militarily.
  It is past time to end the open-ended commitment the President has 
made in Iraq. Reportedly the President will propose benchmarks the 
Iraqi government must achieve, but since there will be no consequences 
if the Iraqis fail, these benchmarks are meaningless. The Iraqi 
government has failed to follow through on previous commitments, yet 
the President's response has only been to express continuing support 
for the Iraqi Prime Minister. His proposal this week will likely be 
more of the same.
  As long as the U.S. military remains stuck with the President's 
pledge of unlimited support, Iraqi politicians and security forces will 
use the U.S. presence as a crutch and will fail to take the necessary 
steps to solve their differences, establish an effective and inclusive 
government, end sectarian violence, and create a secure and prosperous 
society.
  Democracy and stability cannot be imposed on unwilling parties. As 
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said recently on Meet the 
Press, a stable, pluralistic democracy in Iraq is everyone's second 
choice except ours. The Shias want power for themselves. The Sunnis 
want power. And the Kurds want power and independence. What they don't 
want to do is share that power, and we can't make them.
  Being confronted with the reality of a U.S. withdrawal should force 
the Iraqi factions to reach the political compromises necessary to move 
their country forward. If not, there is no reason to prolong the U.S. 
involvement in Iraq if we want a stable country more than the Iraqi 
people and their elected leaders do.
  The U.S. cannot impose freedom, security, and unity in Iraq by force. 
Those worthy goals can only be achieved by the Iraqi people themselves, 
which will only happen when the Iraqi people and their leaders decide 
to put aside their sectarian differences. The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, 
Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have 
been in conflict for 1,400 years. Nor should the U.S. military be 
forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a civil 
war. The U.S. military cannot solve the sectarian violence and the lack 
of political reconciliation in Iraq. Only the Iraqis can.
  In a minute, I will address where I believe we need to go from here. 
But, before that, I want to briefly review how we got into Iraq and how 
the Bush administration's many mistakes have brought us to the disaster 
we face today.
  The list of the Bush administration's failures with respect to Iraq 
is long and well-known. But it bears repeating, particularly since the 
administration may be making similar ones with respect to Iran.
  The administration manipulated, misrepresented and in some cases 
outright lied about the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction programs and non-existent ties to al-Qaeda in order to 
build support in Congress and among the public for the war.
  The administration went in with too few troops to successfully carry 
out the mission.
  The administration went in with few real allies.
  The administration went in with no exit strategy.
  The administration failed to stop the rampant looting in the wake of 
Saddam Hussein's ousting, which set back recovery and reconstruction.
  The administration failed to understand the ethnic tensions that were 
unleashed in Iraq.
  The administration failed to understand the ethnic power bases in 
Iraq.
  The administration relied on Iraqi exiles with no support among the 
Iraqi people.
  The administration did not turn over authority to Iraqis early on. 
Instead, they stood up the Coalition Provision Authority to run Iraq, 
which cemented in the minds of the Iraqis that U.S. forces were an 
occupying power.
  The administration largely used inexperienced political hacks to run 
the CPA rather than experienced foreign service-types or individuals 
with subject matter expertise.
  The administration disbanded the Iraqi army, which added to the 
security problems by creating a large pool of unemployed, armed, and 
alienated Iraqis.
  The administration purged the Iraqi government of all Baath party 
members, even low-level Baathists, which continues to hamper the 
delivery of even basic government services to Iraqis since the 
bureaucracy has basically been created from scratch.
  The administration failed to conduct proper oversight of 
reconstruction resulting in waste, fraud, and abuse, poor contractor 
performance and Iraqi expectations for progress not being met.
  This is not an exhaustive list, but it highlights some major failures 
that have contributed to the chaos in Iraq.
  The administration claims that what has happened in Iraq was 
unforeseeable. In reality, many critics predicted the problems in Iraq. 
The administration just chose to ignore those who raised concerns. The 
problems in Iraq are actually worse than predicted because of the 
administration's blunders.

[[Page 642]]

  The administration ignored the doctrine created by its own Secretary 
of State Colin Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff. The ``Powell doctrine'' says that the U.S. should go to war only 
as a last resort and then only with overwhelming force. In his article 
``U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead'' in Foreign Affairs in 1992-93 Powell 
posed a number of questions to be asked by U.S. policymakers before 
launching a war. Is a vital national security interest threatened? Do 
we have a clear, attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been 
fully and frankly analyzed? Have all other non-violent policy means 
been exhausted? Is there a plausible exit strategy? Have the 
consequences been fully considered? Is the action supported by the 
American people? Does the U.S. have broad international support?
  The answer to these questions in the case of the Iraq war is no. But 
the administration went ahead anyway and Powell put aside any 
misgivings he may have had and publicly supported it.
  The administration ignored General Eric Shinseki, then the head of 
the Army, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 
February 25, 2003, that the administration's plans failed to include an 
adequate number of troops. He said, ``I would say that what's been 
mobilized to this point--something on the order of several hundred 
thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be 
required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of 
geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions 
that could lead to other problems.''
  Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's 
estimate ``far off the mark'' and ``wildly off the mark''. Wolfowitz 
said it would be ``hard to believe'' more troops would be required for 
post-war Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
  It may have been hard for an ideologue like Mr. Wolfowitz to believe, 
but it wasn't hard for a military professional like General Shinseki to 
envision.
  Many Members of Congress also raised concerns. I personally wrote to 
the President on September 5, 2002. I challenged the supposed threat 
posed by Iraq's assumed WMD programs. I raised questions about more 
pressing national security challenges like North Korea and Iran. I 
raised questions about the impact the war would have on U.S. relations 
with allies and our reputation in the world. I posed questions about 
what the impact of a long-term occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces. I 
asked about the impact of diverting military and intelligence resources 
to Iraq from the battle against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. And I raised 
concerns about the economic impact and the impact on U.S. taxpayers 
from the war.
  The administration dismissed the concerns and warnings of critics 
like me and launched this ill-advised war. I voted against it. We're 
forty-six months into the war, where do we go from here?
  The President apparently believes that the U.S. needs to escalate the 
conflict in Iraq by sending 30,000 or more additional troops to Iraq. I 
think that is a mistake. It will not bring stability to Iraq, and I 
oppose it and will vote against it if given the opportunity.
  Just as importantly, the President's chief military advisors oppose 
it. As General John Abizaid, then the head of all U.S. forces in the 
Middle East, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee 
hearing on November 15, 2006, ``I met with every divisional commander, 
General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked 
together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring 
in more American Troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to 
achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is 
because we want the Iraqis to do more. It is easy for the Iraqis to 
rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces 
prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for 
their own future.''
  The President didn't like what he heard, which may be why General 
Abizaid is expected to retire this March. As a Lebanese-American who is 
fluent in Arabic, his understanding of the region will be greatly 
missed. General Casey has also been removed as commander of U.S. forces 
in Iraq.
  Shinseki, Abizaid, Casey. There is a pattern here of the Bush 
administration ignoring the advice of military leaders and firing them 
when they don't tell the President what he wants to hear.
  Let me be clear, I do not believe there is any level of U.S. troops 
that could stabilize Iraq at this point.
  But, I think it is particularly offensive that the President is 
reportedly planning to put 30,000 additional U.S. lives at risk when 
that escalation is virtually certain to have little or no impact on the 
violence in Iraq. There might be a small, temporary reduction in the 
chaos in Iraq, but the escalation will not solve the deep and 
underlying political conflicts that are preventing a long-term 
resolution to the violence in Iraq.
  The President desperately wants to look like he's trying something 
new in Iraq in response to the concerns of the American people, but 
really he's just repeating the same mistakes and compounding previous 
failures. The administration is trying to prolong the U.S. involvement 
in Iraq in order to perpetuate the fallacy that the President's 
original vision for a democratic, pro-U.S., capitalistic, pluralistic 
Iraq is still achievable. It is not. The American Enterprise Institute 
military escalation plan for Iraq, which is the basis for the 
President's proposals, has a timeline of 18-24 months, conveniently 
enough leaving the mess in Iraq for the next President, meaning 
President Bush would never have to admit his policies in Iraq have been 
a failure but at a very steep cost to our troops taxpayers.
  The administration already increased the number of U.S. troops in 
Baghdad this summer and has occasionally increased the number of troops 
throughout Iraq, yet the violence against our troops and Iraqi security 
forces and civilians continues to increase. Following the influx of 
troops this summer in Operation Forward Together, the violence in Iraq 
actually increased. Weekly attacks increased by 15 percent while the 
number of Iraqi civilian casualties increased by 51 percent.
  Based on historical analysis, counterinsurgency experts estimate it 
takes around 20 U.S. troops per 1,000 inhabitants to successfully fight 
a counterinsurgency. To achieve that ratio in Baghdad alone would 
require 120,000 troops. Even with the escalation proposed by the 
President, we'd only have around 40,000 troops in Baghdad. For all of 
Iraq, it would require 500,000 troops. We only have around 140,000 
there today.
  General Shinseki and others based their original recommendation for 
several hundred thousand troops on this historical analysis. But, the 
time in which a large number of forces could stabilize Iraq has long 
since passed.
  The bottom line is that a proposal to increase U.S. troop levels in 
Baghdad or Iraq more generally by 30,000 troops in not a serious effort 
to restore stability to Iraq. Essentially, the President is proposing 
to put more lives at risk with little or no chance of success.
  The President and his allies justify the continuing U.S. presence in 
Iraq by claiming that if we don't fight there, we'll have to fight here 
at home. However, the Iraqi Sunni rejectionists, Saddamists, and 
nationalist Shias, who combined make up the vast bulk of the insurgents 
and militias committing violence in Iraq, have no interest in attacking 
the U.S. homeland. They just want U.S. military forces out of their own 
country. They have no designs on our country. So it is misleading, at 
best, to argue that if we don't fight there, we will fight them in the 
streets of the United States.
  It is also misleading to pretend that if the U.S. leaves that somehow 
Osama bin Laden will take control of Iraq. There is no chance that the 
Shias and Kurds, who represent around 80 percent of the population in 
Iraq, will allow foreign terrorist elements to take over the country. 
Even the majority of the Sunnis have grown tired of foreign terrorists 
operating in Iraq.
  A better strategy is to announce a timeline for bringing our troops 
home over the next 6 months to a year. The administration has always 
set timelines for political developments in Iraq--for elections, for 
the drafting of the constitution etc. The administration argued such 
timelines were necessary to focus the energy of Iraq's leaders and to 
force compromises. We need to do the same on the military side.
  In the interim, I have also proposed that U.S. troops be removed from 
front line combat positions in Iraqi cities and towns, turning over 
daily security patrols, interactions with citizens, and any offensive 
security actions to the Iraqis themselves.
  The training and equipping of Iraqi security forces should be 
accelerated and the sectarian balance must be improved.
  The U.S. must renounce any U.S. interest in constructing permanent 
U.S. military bases in Iraq.
  It is also important to accelerate reconstruction spending and grant 
the bulk of reconstruction contracts to local companies employing 
Iraqis rather than multinational corporations, whom have proven 
inefficient, inflexible, sometimes fraudulent and have even imported 
workers rather than employing Iraqis.
  The U.S. embassy in Baghdad should also be reduced to normal size and 
authority rather than establishing one of the largest embassies in the 
world.

[[Page 643]]

  And, the U.S. must engage in robust diplomacy with all factions in 
Iraq, except the foreign terrorists and domestic al-Qaeda elements, and 
work with Iraq's neighbors in an effort to bring about political 
reconciliation among Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.
  Our troops have done all that has been asked of them in Iraq. Saddam 
Hussein is dead. His allies are on the run or in prison. The threat 
from WMDs in Iraq is nonexistent. Arguably, the war that Congress 
authorized has been won. Our troops should come home. Congress did not 
authorize U.S. troops to referee a civil war in Iraq.

                          ____________________