[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16174]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     WAITING FOR THE NEXT BIG EVENT

  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, last month, despite my objections and many 
of my colleagues, Congress passed a bill to continue funding the 
occupation of Iraq. Now everyone is waiting for the next big event in 
the war, General Petraeus's report on whether the escalation, the 
surge, is succeeding. This report is due in September.
  But with our brave American troops and innocent Iraqis continuing to 
die, we are remiss if we twiddle our thumbs and wait for September. We 
need to hold this administration accountable for its actions in Iraq, 
and we need to do it today, not 3 months from now.
  So I want to go back to January 10 of this year, the night that the 
President announced his new surge policy in a speech to the Nation, to 
see if he is delivering on what he promised. On that night, he said, 
``America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has 
announced.''
  But here we are, Mr. Speaker, 6 months later, and the Iraqi 
government has made virtually no progress on any of it's benchmarks. 
Even Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, our new war czar, expressed 
frustration about this in his Senate confirmation hearing. General Lute 
said, ``My assessment would be that the Iraqis have shown very little 
progress.''
  Mr. Speaker, back on January 10, we were told that the surge would 
help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian 
violence. But the Pentagon's own report on the current situation, which 
was released last Wednesday, said that the violence continues to be 
driven by sectarianism. In other words, we've sent our troops to fight 
a civil war that has nothing to do with protecting America from 
terrorism.
  Also, back on January 10, the escalation speech included these words: 
``Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda 
leaders.''
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, in the Senate hearing I mentioned a moment ago, 
Senator Evan Bayh quoted a top CIA expert in saying that the American 
presence in Iraq is creating more members of al Qaeda than we are 
killing.
  The President claims that he has the power to grab people off the 
streets of America, declare them enemy combatants and order the 
military to hold them indefinitely. But last week, a Federal Appeals 
Court ruled that, ``to sanction such authority would have disastrous 
consequences for the Constitution and for the country.''
  The President says that he is a strict constructionist when it comes 
to the Constitution. But he has shown that he is not a strict 
constructionist, not a loose constructionist, but a non constructionist 
who simply ignores the Constitution.
  It is time, Mr. Speaker, for a new policy in Iraq. We must fully fund 
the safe redeployment of our troops. We must guarantee the very best 
health care for our veterans. We must work with the Iraqi people and 
the international community to provide for the reconstruction of Iraq. 
We must look to diplomacy, not preemptive war, to help Iraq and its 
neighbors to achieve political solutions to the region's problems, and 
there must be no permanent American military bases in Iraq.
  And America must rely, once again, on our most powerful weapons in 
the fight against terrorism, our Constitution and our democratic 
values.
  And, Mr. Speaker, we must bring our troops home.

                          ____________________