[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18937-18942]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise to speak for a while on the pending 
business before the Senate this past week and next week, which is the 
Defense authorization bill.
  Now, constituents, people who have been watching the proceedings of 
the Senate for the last week, might be a little confused because if 
they know a little bit about how the Senate has historically done its 
business, they know the Defense authorization bill is the bill we adopt 
each year to set the policies and the spending priorities for the 
Defense Department to ensure our national security will remain strong 
for the next year.
  However, this year, instead of talking about the acquisition of 
equipment we need, the new aegis cruisers we are going to be sending 
around the world--deploying to ensure we have a missile defense that is 
not only on land but on the seas--instead of talking about the space 
test bed--a research project that enables us, among other things, to 
find out how to deal with antisatellite weapons that the Chinese, for 
example, might use to destroy our satellites--or instead of talking 
about the need to increase the number of our military--primarily, our 
soldiers and marines--by about 90,000, so we have a more robust 
military to have boots on the ground anywhere in the world--instead of 
debating these various issues about our military posture, we have spent 
almost the entire week focused on what, the argument about the Iraq 
war.
  Now, it is perfectly appropriate to debate issues relative to the war 
against terrorists. Certainly, the main battlefield in that war against 
terrorists today is Iraq. But it seems to me our focus is a little off 
when, instead of

[[Page 18938]]

looking at the things we could do to make the United States more 
secure--by focusing on this Defense authorization bill and the specific 
elements of it--we are, instead, focusing on arguments about how 
quickly to withdraw from Iraq.
  We have in place a new strategy in Iraq. At the end of last year, 
after the election, when Secretary Rumsfeld left his position as 
Secretary of Defense, the President said: All right, I believe we have 
not had a successful strategy, and we are going to have a new strategy.
  That strategy was announced in January, sometimes called the surge. 
But what it involved was a combination of involving Iraqis more in the 
defense and securing of their country and the application of a very 
focused U.S. force of increased strength in specific areas of the 
country, not just to take those areas but to hold them once they were 
taken.
  In the past, we would move into an area, we would clear it of the 
enemy, and then, after a few days, we would leave. What happened? The 
enemy would filter right back into the same areas, sometimes 
establishing an even stronger presence than they had before.
  That, obviously, did not work, and the President realized it. 
Everybody in the country said: The election results show you need to 
have a new strategy. So the President, working with the Iraqis, working 
with General Petraeus--David Petraeus was confirmed unanimously by the 
Senate to go over and develop and execute a new strategy. Working with 
them, the President devised this new strategy of taking and holding the 
key areas of Iraq so peace and stability could be brought to that war-
torn country. The opportunity for the Government then to grab hold of 
the situation and do the things it needs to do would be given full 
effect.
  That strategy counted on five new brigades of U.S. forces, consisting 
of over 25,000 on-the-ground servicemen, going in to join with about 
twice as many Iraqi Army and police units to effectuate this strategy 
of clearing and holding and maintaining control that I mentioned 
before.
  That strategy, finally, about 2 weeks ago, has been put in full 
force, with the arrival of the last of the five brigades. They have 
gone into both Anbar Province, which is almost a third of the country 
of Iraq, largely controlled by--it is called a Sunni area, and largely 
controlled by tribal leaders--and into Baghdad, which is, obviously, 
the primary population center of the country, where a lot of the 
previous Shiite and Sunni conflict was occurring.
  What have we seen in the debate over the Defense authorization bill? 
We have seen attempt after attempt after attempt from the other side of 
the aisle to declare the war lost, the strategy a failure, and, 
therefore, a commitment by the Senate to direct the President to begin 
bringing the troops home.
  Next Tuesday--I believe it is Tuesday--we will actually vote on an 
amendment that has as its specific directive a mandate that we begin 
bringing the troops home within a very specific time--I believe it is 
120 days now--and that withdrawal be complete within roughly a year--
again, I have forgotten the exact date--clearly, predicated on the 
notion that we have either lost or cannot win, that there is no point 
in allowing this new strategy to play out to see whether it can 
succeed, and to tell the entire world we are leaving Iraq.
  Now, they put a little pink ribbon around it and said: Oh, we will 
leave some forces over the horizon so we can ride to the rescue if 
anything bad happens--as if there is not a clear common understanding 
that a lot bad will, of course, happen or the need to maintain some 
presence to help train Iraqi troops.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article by 
Stephen Biddle dated July 11 that was carried in the Washington Post.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From washingtonpost.com, July 11, 2007]

                        Iraq: Go Deep or Get Out

                          (By Stephen Biddle)

       The president's shaky political consensus for the surge in 
     Iraq is in danger of collapsing after the recent defections 
     of prominent Senate Republicans such as Richard Lugar (Ind.), 
     Pete Domenici (N.M.) and George Voinovich (Ohio). But this 
     growing opposition to the surge has not yet translated into 
     support for outright withdrawal--few lawmakers are 
     comfortable with abandoning Iraq or admitting defeat. The 
     result has been a search for some kind of politically 
     moderate ``Plan B'' that would split the difference between 
     surge and withdrawal.
       The problem is that these politics do not fit the military 
     reality of Iraq. Many would like to reduce the U.S. 
     commitment to something like half of today's troop presence 
     there. But it is much harder to find a mission for the 
     remaining 60,000 to 80,000 soldiers that makes any sense 
     militarily.
       Perhaps the most popular centrist option today is drawn 
     from the Baker-Hamilton commission recommendations of last 
     December. This would withdraw U.S. combat brigades, shift the 
     American mission to one of training and supporting the Iraqi 
     security forces, and cut total U.S. troop levels in the 
     country by about half. This idea is at the heart of the 
     proposed legislative effort that Domenici threw his support 
     behind last week, and support is growing on both sides of the 
     aisle on Capitol Hill.
       The politics make sense, but the compromise leaves us with 
     an untenable military mission. Without a major U.S. combat 
     effort to keep the violence down, the American training 
     effort would face challenges even bigger than those our 
     troops are confronting today. An ineffective training effort 
     would leave tens of thousands of American trainers, advisers 
     and supporting troops exposed to that violence in the 
     meantime. The net result is likely to be continued U.S. 
     casualties with little positive effect on Iraq's ongoing 
     civil war.
       The American combat presence in Iraq is insufficient to end 
     the violence but does cap its intensity. If we draw down that 
     combat presence, violence will rise accordingly. To be 
     effective, embedded trainers and advisers must live and 
     operate with the Iraqi soldiers they mentor--they are not 
     lecturers sequestered in some safe classroom. The greater the 
     violence, the riskier their jobs and the heavier their 
     losses.
       That violence reduces their ability to succeed as trainers. 
     There are many barriers to an effective Iraqi security force. 
     But the toughest is sectarian factionalism. Iraq is in the 
     midst of a civil war in which all Iraqis are increasingly 
     forced to take sides for their own survival. Iraq's security 
     forces are necessarily drawn from the same populations that 
     are being pulled apart into factions. No military can be 
     hermetically sealed off from its society--the more severe the 
     sectarian violence, the deeper the divisions in Iraqi society 
     become and the harder it is for Americans to create the kind 
     of disinterested nationalist security force that could 
     stabilize Iraq. Under the best conditions, it is unrealistic 
     to expect a satisfactory Iraqi security force anytime soon, 
     and the more severe the violence, the worse the prospects.
       The result is a vicious cycle. The more we shift out of 
     combat missions and into training, the harder we make the 
     trainers' job and the more exposed they become. It is 
     unrealistic to expect that we can pull back to some safe yet 
     productive mission of training but not fighting--this would 
     be neither safe nor productive.
       If the surge is unacceptable, the better option is to cut 
     our losses and withdraw altogether. In fact, the substantive 
     case for either extreme--surge or outright withdrawal--is 
     stronger than for any policy between. The surge is a long-
     shot gamble. But middle-ground options leave us with the 
     worst of both worlds: continuing casualties but even less 
     chance of stability in exchange. Moderation and centrism are 
     normally the right instincts in American politics, and many 
     lawmakers in both parties desperately want to find a workable 
     middle ground on Iraq. But while the politics are right, the 
     military logic is not.

  Mr. KYL. The reason I want to put this article in the Record is that 
it very clearly points out the problem with the strategy of many of the 
Democrats that I have just outlined, including the notion that somehow 
you could reduce our forces by perhaps half or more and still achieve 
this goal of defeating al-Qaida and training up the Iraqi units.
  One of Biddle's key points is that the only way you can successfully 
train up these Iraqi units is having relative stability in the country, 
that if you have an out-of-control war going on, you have to be 
fighting that war, and it is very difficult to at the same time be 
training up these forces. The best way to train the Iraqi military is 
to work in conjunction with U.S. units, as General Petraeus has 
devised, go into an area, clear it, and then leave primarily Iraqi 
units behind to continue to maintain control in the area. But if you 
have constant fighting and you haven't been able to clear or hold the 
area, those

[[Page 18939]]

Iraqi troops never have that opportunity or the experience of holding 
the area.
  So, as Mr. Biddle points out, you can't have it both ways. This 
compromise may satisfy some political requirements back home, but it is 
totally unworkable in the place where it matters, and that is in Iraq. 
You can't withdraw half or more of the troops quickly and have any 
chance of success in maintaining peace and stability and in helping to 
train up the Iraqi forces.
  So why are people in the Senate focused on bringing the troops home 
or otherwise micromanaging the way the President deploys the units to 
achieve the mission's objectives? Well, it is either one of two things. 
Now, from outside this body, I know there are a lot of people who have 
a motive of trying to make the President look bad and undercutting his 
authority and undermining the strategy he is following, I gather both 
for partisan reasons and because they just don't think it can work. But 
within the body, here in the Chamber, I know my colleagues do not want 
any American life to have been lost in vain and that they treasure 
every life that has been put on the line. That is why it is troublesome 
to me to have to defeat amendments which have as their core point 
undercutting the President's authority, micromanaging the war from the 
Congress, and specifically calling for early withdrawal, and by early I 
mean before the surge has even had an opportunity to play out.
  In that regard, I would like to place in the Record a piece that was 
carried this morning in the Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer, and 
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From washingtonpost.com, Jul. 13, 2007]

                           Deserting Petraeus

                        (By Charles Krauthammer)

       ``The key to turning [Anbar] around was the shift in 
     allegiance by tribal sheiks. But the sheiks turned only after 
     a prolonged offensive by American and Iraqi forces, starting 
     in November, that put al-Qaeda groups on the run.''--The New 
     York Times, July 8.
       Finally, after four terribly long years, we know what 
     works. Or what can work. A year ago, a confidential Marine 
     intelligence report declared Anbar province (which comprises 
     about a third of Iraq's territory) lost to al-Qaeda. Now, in 
     what the Times's John Burns calls an ``astonishing success,'' 
     the tribal sheiks have joined our side and committed large 
     numbers of fighters that, in concert with American and Iraqi 
     forces, have largely driven out al-Qaeda and turned its 
     former stronghold of Ramadi into one of the most secure 
     cities in Iraq.
       It began with a U.S.-led offensive that killed or wounded 
     more than 200 enemy fighters and captured 600. Most important 
     was the follow-up. Not a retreat back to American bases but 
     the setting up of small posts within the population that, 
     together with the Iraqi national and tribal forces, have 
     brought relative stability to Anbar.
       The same has started happening in many of the Sunni areas 
     around Baghdad, including Diyala province--just a year ago 
     considered as lost as Anbar--where, for example, the Sunni 
     insurgent 1920 Revolution Brigades has turned against al-
     Qaeda and joined the fight on the side of U.S. and Iraqi 
     government forces.
       We don't yet know if this strategy will work in mixed 
     Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nor can we be certain that this 
     cooperation between essentially Sunni tribal forces and an 
     essentially Shiite central government can endure. But what 
     cannot be said--although it is now heard daily in 
     Washington--is that the surge, which is shorthand for Gen. 
     David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy, has failed. 
     The tragedy is that, just as a working strategy has been 
     found, some Republicans in the Senate have lost heart and 
     want to pull the plug.
       It is understandable that Sens. Lugar, Voinovich, Domenici, 
     Snowe and Warner may no longer trust President Bush's 
     judgment when he tells them to wait until Petraeus reports in 
     September. What is not understandable is the vote of no 
     confidence they are passing on Petraeus. These are the same 
     senators who sent him back to Iraq by an 81 to 0 vote to 
     institute his new counterinsurgency strategy.
       A month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we could still win 
     in Iraq. The general, who had recently attended two memorial 
     services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if 
     he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the 
     life of a single soldier.
       Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs 
     more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus's plan 
     just as it is beginning--the last surge troops arrived only 
     last month--on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to 
     declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in 
     that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still 
     believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to 
     believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he 
     really knows is an already failed strategy.
       That's the logic of the wobbly Republicans' position. But 
     rather than lay it on Petraeus, they prefer to lay it on 
     Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and point out his government's 
     inability to meet the required political ``benchmarks.'' As a 
     longtime critic of the Maliki government, I agree that it has 
     proved itself incapable of passing laws important for long-
     term national reconciliation.
       But first comes the short term. And right now we have the 
     chance to continue to isolate al-Qaeda and, province by 
     province, deny it the Sunni sea in which it swims. A year 
     ago, it appeared that the only way to win back the Sunnis and 
     neutralize the extremists was with great national compacts 
     about oil and power sharing. But Anbar has unexpectedly shown 
     that even without these constitutional settlements, the 
     insurgency can be neutralized and al-Qaeda defeated at the 
     local and provincial levels with a new and robust 
     counterinsurgency strategy.
       The costs are heartbreakingly high--increased American 
     casualties as the enemy is engaged and spectacular suicide 
     bombings designed to terrify Iraqis and demoralize Americans. 
     But the stakes are extremely high as well.
       In the long run, agreements on oil, federalism and de-
     Baathification are crucial for stabilizing Iraq. But their 
     absence at this moment is not a reason to give up in despair, 
     now that we finally have a counterinsurgency strategy in 
     place that is showing success against the one enemy--al-
     Qaeda--that both critics and supporters of the war maintain 
     must be fought everywhere and at all cost.

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, what Charles Krauthammer, who is a very 
knowledgeable analyst and writer on this subject, has said is that the 
Petraeus plan has the makings of a successful strategy, it has already 
begun to show some positive results, and that it would be folly to 
declare it a failure before it even has a chance to play out.
  Everybody knows General Petraeus is going to report back to the 
Congress and to the President in September of this year, and he will be 
accompanied by Ambassador Crocker, our Ambassador to Iraq, who will 
give us a report on the status of the situation. Now, it has never been 
contemplated that that is the end of the matter by any stretch of the 
imagination since it will have only been a few months since the 
strategy will have been in place, but at least he can give us an idea 
of how it is working. Why anybody would want to set a different course 
now, before he gives that report, is beyond me and certainly beyond 
Charles Krauthammer.
  Krauthammer points out that this new strategy has already begun to 
show success. For example, in the Anbar Province, which was an area 
that was almost exclusively controlled by al-Qaida--let me digress for 
just a moment to make this point. We heard discussions several months 
ago about a civil war in Iraq. It is true, there were elements of Sunni 
and Shiite Iraqis who were fighting each other, and some were calling 
that a civil war. But two things are important to know about that.
  The first is that much of that fighting was instigated by al-Qaida. 
Al-Qaida had come into the Sunni areas and had a declared intention to 
start a fight between the Shiites and the Sunnis. When the fight didn't 
materialize, al-Qaida went to Samarra, a holy place for Shiites, and 
blew up one of their most revered shrines, the Golden Mosque. In fact, 
it has been twice attacked, thus, in effect, poking the nose of the 
bear to the point that the bear had to react, and the Shiites did 
react. They said: If the Iraqi Army cannot protect our holy sites, by 
golly, we will--or whatever the Iraqi phrase is--and they created 
militias that began attacking Sunnis, and we did have a lot of Shiite 
on Sunni and vice versa violence. But the first point is it was largely 
instigated by al-Qaida, who knew precisely what it was doing and had a 
declared strategy to begin that fight. We have the intelligence to 
demonstrate that.
  The second point is that al-Qaida, since that violence has to some 
extent now subsided because of the surge--we

[[Page 18940]]

have gone into these Shiite neighborhoods, for example, and we have 
persuaded the Shiite leadership to stop the militias from acting, stop 
the violence, and calm the neighborhoods down so that life can return 
to normal, and in at least half of Baghdad that has now been what is 
occurring.
  In the Sunni areas, we went to the tribal leaders there and said: 
Look, al-Qaida is causing you more problems than it is solving. 
Eventually, these tribal leaders came back to our troops and to the 
Iraqi leadership and said: You are right. We have now seen what life 
under al-Qaida would be like as a Taliban kind of rule, where they 
don't let us do anything; they impose this very harsh penalty on 
anybody who isn't conforming to their way of life.
  Most of the al-Qaida are coming into Iraq from other countries. They 
are foreigners to the Iraqis, and many of these tribal sheiks, almost 
all of them in the Anbar Province, said: We are tired of dealing with 
these al-Qaida terrorists, and we want to join you in fighting them. By 
the hundreds and thousands, young Iraqis began joining the police and 
army to fight al-Qaida. And Anbar Province now, as Charles Krauthammer 
details in his article and as our intelligence has also made very 
clear, has become one of the strongest anti-al-Qaida areas in the 
country. It has largely been pacified. It is a good example of how this 
new strategy can work.
  What Krauthammer says is: We don't know yet if this same strategy 
will work in the next Sunni-Shiite areas, but we can see how it has 
worked and how it could work if we allow time for the Petraeus plan to 
play out. He points out that a month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we 
could still win in Iraq. I am going to quote here:

       The General, who had recently attended two memorial 
     services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if 
     he thought he could not succeed, he would not be risking the 
     life of a single soldier.

  That is a very important concept for us to remember back here because 
when people talk about supporting the troops, it seems to me the first 
type of support we should be providing is the moral support for these 
soldiers, to support their mission, not only to provide everything they 
need in terms of material support and training but to assure them they 
are not risking their lives in vain, that we will continue to support 
the mission we have sent them on that they think they can win and 
believe they are winning. The worst thing we could do is to have 
expressions here in the Senate that we think they have lost or that 
they can't win, and therefore we want to begin declaring defeat and 
leaving the battlefield. At that point, as it was back in Vietnam, it 
becomes a question of who is the last man out and who is the last 
person to risk death, for what? For a timetable? That cannot be why we 
send young men and women into combat, into harm's way.
  For those who believe it is already lost or that it is a failure and 
that we cannot succeed, I say to them, you have an obligation, then, to 
try to bring them home immediately because not 1 more day should pass 
for people to risk life for nothing more than a timetable. I don't 
happen to believe that. General Petraeus doesn't happen to believe 
that. I believe we can allow the Petraeus plan to have the time it 
needs to show that it can succeed, not just in Anbar Province but in 
other places in Iraq as well.
  Let me quote another couple of sentences from Krauthammer's article:

       Just this week Petraeus said that the one thing he needs 
     more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus's plan 
     just as it is beginning--

  Krauthammer says--

     the last surge troops arrived only last month--on the 
     assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus 
     either deluded or dishonorable.

  Well, he is clearly not deluded or dishonorable.
  I regret that some of my colleagues believe the only way to resolve 
the situation in Iraq is to begin leaving now. That would be a strategy 
for failure.
  I ask my colleagues this: We have in this body made pronouncements 
that we need to help people in places such as Darfur where there is 
genocide occurring, and we have always tried to help people, whether it 
be in Kosovo or Afghanistan or--and incidentally, isn't it interesting 
that in two of those places, we are talking about largely Muslim 
countries, and in places such as Somalia, also a predominance of 
Muslims--we cannot as a nation ignore what would happen in Iraq were we 
to leave prematurely. Almost all of the intelligence in the Baker-
Hamilton report which is cited by many of my colleagues confirms this 
as well, acknowledges that if we leave Iraq before the Iraqis can 
maintain peace and stability, the kind of genocide and killing and 
terrorism that would ensue would be almost incalculable. Thousands, if 
not hundreds of thousands and more, would die. Many believe that blood 
would be on our hands if we are the ones who walk out before they have 
the ability to prevent that kind of violence.
  Al-Qaida clearly is the primary enemy now. As I talked about before, 
the largely Shiite-Sunni violence has subsided to a significant degree, 
and most of what is occurring against our forces and against other 
Iraqis today is being perpetrated by al-Qaida--Al-Qaida in Iraq. If we 
leave and al-Qaida in Iraq is allowed basically a free hand, most 
predict that it will have created a situation where, like it did in 
Afghanistan, al-Qaida will have the ability to train, to plan attacks, 
and to have refuge from any kind of action to stop them from doing so. 
They would also have access to the oil wealth of the country of Iraq 
and to the other resources of the country. To the extent that anybody 
in Iraq has tried to be a friend of the United States or cooperate with 
the Iraqi Government--all of those people, remember, with the purple 
thumbs--would be targeted by the thugs and terrorists who would reign 
in Iraq. They would undoubtedly be executed.
  Think of Saddam Hussein's regime. Think back when the North 
Vietnamese came sweeping into South Vietnam and all of the boat people 
fled and those who didn't get away were sent to the ``reeducation 
camps'' or killed. Think of Cambodia, when we left there with 3 million 
Cambodians killed.
  Were we to leave Iraq, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 
people will die--largely innocent people. That blood will be on our 
hands.
  Mr. President, that is not the worst of it. The U.S. security will 
have been significantly jeopardized because we will have ceded the 
central battle in the war against the terrorists to the terrorists. We 
will have been defeated by the terrorists, much more than their sneak 
attack on September 11 defeated us. It killed 3,000 Americans. It was, 
like Pearl Harbor, the attack that awoke the ``sleeping giant'' to 
finally recognize that after having been attacked, I believe, six times 
previously by al-Qaida, we finally realized we are in a war with those 
people. Whether we want to fight or not, they are going to attack us, 
and we better fight back.
  We began to do that. I fear that there is a tiredness beginning to 
seep into some around the world--and even among some Americans--in 
fighting this enemy that is very elusive and generally doesn't fight us 
on the battlefield but, rather, waits and waits and, as soon as we 
relax, engages in a sneak attack. They have tried to do it against our 
allies. They have done it in Great Britain and in Spain, for example. 
Other activities have been thwarted. We have been fortunate because our 
homeland security has thwarted those attacks here at home.
  We are not always going to have a battlefield on which to confront 
them. What confuses me is the argument of some of my colleagues that we 
should cede the one place where they have directly confronted us on the 
battlefield in Iraq--cede that battle to the enemy by prematurely 
withdrawing our troops and somehow reconfiguring our effort to fight 
them in a different way at a different place. The argument that, if we 
leave Iraq, we can focus on them in Afghanistan is a false choice. We 
are fighting them in both places. If we need more elements of support 
in Afghanistan, then we should send them there. That is supposed to be 
a NATO exercise, and a lot of our NATO friends

[[Page 18941]]

could be doing more there to help us. I think we could use more help 
there.
  It is a false argument to say we should not fight them in both 
places, when the enemy has finally come out onto the battlefield and is 
confronting us in the one area where we can defeat them with the U.S. 
military. Nobody can beat our military, the best military in the world 
and that has ever existed. Al-Qaida is no match for our military. When 
they are willing to basically come out of their holes and confront us 
in Iraq, for us not to directly attack, kill, or capture as many of 
them as possible would be the ultimate in negligence and fecklessness 
in fighting the war against terrorists. They are the terrorists; they 
are there. We are able to kill them there. Why we would not engage the 
enemy in the place where there are the most of them is beyond me.
  Now, what that means is that we are putting our young men and women 
in harm's way. They have volunteered for this mission in which they 
believe deeply because they have looked into the eye of the enemy and 
have seen the evil that is there, and they have been willing to lay 
their lives on the line. Given that fact, and given the fact that we 
have a brilliant commander with a strategy that appears to be working, 
why would the United States Congress pull the rug out from under the 
operation of General Petraeus and our troops when they have their hands 
around the neck of the enemy and can deal a very severe blow to this 
evil enemy? That is beyond my comprehension. It takes nothing from the 
argument that we should be engaged in intelligence operations around 
the world, that we should be trying our best to get Osama bin Laden, 
and their argument suggests that somehow we are not. That denigrates 
the efforts of our special forces and others who, believe me, are 
trying their very best to get this guy and the other leadership of al-
Qaida. But to somehow suggest that we should leave Iraq because the 
enemy exists in other places is not only totally illogical but, as I 
said, would be a very feckless approach in trying to win this war 
against the terrorists.
  Another thing that bothers me relates directly to the bill we are 
debating. We are going to see it next week, and we saw it this morning. 
It is the notion that has begun to creep into the discussion that maybe 
this is not really a war at all. One of the candidates for President 
called this just a bumper sticker. Well, their effort to make this a 
criminal enterprise--in other words, to criminalize the war rather than 
treat it as the war that it is--is very troublesome to me.
  This morning, we had an amendment that was drafted to provide that 
instead of a $25 million reward to get Osama bin Laden, it upped it to 
$50 million for the capture or information leading to the capture of 
Osama bin Laden.
  Mr. President, I was not aware there was a limit on time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a 10-minute time limit on morning 
business.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 more 
minutes.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, how much time is left in total?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a 10-minute limitation on each 
speaker, and if it is not objected to, the Senator may continue to 
speak.
  Mr. KYL. I wasn't aware that Senator Brownback was here. I ask 
unanimous consent to speak for another 3 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, this amendment was drafted to provide money 
for the capture or information leading to the capture of Osama bin 
Laden. Senator Sununu and others looked at that and said: Wait a 
minute, this is a war. It may well occur that we cannot just capture 
him, he may have to be killed. So we added the words ``or death'' to 
the amendment by a second-degree amendment. That was adopted this 
morning.
  Next week, we are going to get right back to the argument about 
criminalization versus war. There is in the bill--and we are going to 
have to strike the language with an amendment--language that requires 
us to send lawyers over to Iraq and Afghanistan to represent these 
terrorists we capture on the battlefield. We would have to give them 
legal representation in theater, and we would have to show them 
classified information that may be used in their prosecution or 
continued detention.
  Mr. President, I have said that is nuts. I hate to use that kind of a 
phrase on the Senate floor, but I don't think it represents good 
policy. We are going to have to strike that language from the bill. 
That is criminalization of the war. This is a war against evil people 
who will kill us if they can. The sooner we recognize that fact and 
deal with them, the sooner we will defeat the enemy, and the enemy will 
no longer represent a threat to us. We cannot assume they don't really 
mean it. We cannot assume we can negotiate with them. We cannot treat 
them as if they are defendants in an American criminal trial. They are 
evil terrorists who deserve to be dealt with on the battlefield, as we 
have dealt with, historically, all of our enemies.
  So I hope that next week we can turn from some of the amendments that 
have been used here to primarily undercut the strategy in dealing with 
the Iraq war and debate some key provisions of the Defense 
authorization bill, which do need our attention--I have a couple of 
amendments I hope we can deal with--and that we can also strike from 
the bill the provision that would allow a new theory of criminal law to 
intrude into the battlefield to deal with the POWs or detainees there 
as if they are criminal defendants in an American court rather than the 
POWs or enemy detainees that, in fact, they are.
  I hope at the conclusion of the debate next week we will have 
continued to defeat these amendments that undercut our efforts in Iraq, 
continued to support the mission of the troops, and thereby the troops, 
and strengthened the Defense authorization bill so that for the next 
year we will have a bill that strongly supports the troops and provides 
for the national security of the United States of America.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to make a few comments. I 
appreciate the Chair staying here and facilitating this and allowing us 
to speak about a very important issue--the key issue of our time--the 
war in Iraq and what is taking place there.
  I want to focus my brief comments on what we need to do on a 
political solution. I think we are caught up with the idea that we need 
to be on a military solution. A military solution is not going to 
ultimately solve the situation in Iraq. You have to have a political, 
durable solution. Unless we are willing to sit there for an indefinite 
number of years with troops engaged in a very active military setting, 
we have to get a political, durable situation in Iraq and on the ground 
if we are going to be realistic about what we are going to do.
  I have worked with Senator Biden on this proposal. I will talk about 
a resolution that we have worked together on for a political solution. 
He chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. I have been on that 
committee for a number of years. I think we have to realize the 
population we are dealing with. The situation is not dissimilar, in 
some respects, to when we saw what took place in the former Yugoslavia. 
We had a number of different populations where history had washed over 
that place with different waves of different individuals' thoughts and 
philosophies. After Tito leaves and you take off this big military 
apparatus and intelligence apparatus that was willing to kill people to 
enforce power, you are left with sectarian groups that don't get along. 
Now Yugoslav has six countries in two autonomous regions after hundreds 
of thousands of people were killed and multiple sets of civil wars that 
took place. I think that is instructive from the standpoint of that is 
what takes place when you take a big military apparatus off of areas 
where you have nonuniform or a homogenous region. We are seeing this in 
Sudan.

[[Page 18942]]

You have in Sudan a north dominated by Arab and Muslim and a south that 
is Black and Christian, by and large. They don't get along. There were 
2 million killed in the south. The south is going to secede. You have 
genocide in Darfur by this government--a militant Islamic regime in 
Khartoum. The world is growing in awareness of what is taking place in 
Darfur.
  I think we have to recognize the situation in Iraq and that you have 
several different populations. The Kurdish population is separate and 
distinct and operating in its own area and doing a nice job. There is 
growth taking place there--not everyplace, but it is doing pretty well. 
You have a mixed Sunni and Shia population in the rest of the country--
dominant Sunni in some areas and dominant Shia in others, and Baghdad 
is a mixed federal city. I think we have to look at that situation and 
recognize the mixture and the combustibility of that mixture and get to 
a more durable political solution.
  You are seeing now an ongoing migration of Iraqis inside their own 
country, which I think suggests Iraq will eventually do what would be 
called a soft partition. That is the logical thing that would take 
place, and it is taking place today. There is an outcome of many 
historical precedents--most notably in Bosnia in the 1990s. Senator 
Biden and I introduced a resolution calling on Iraqis to reach an 
agreement that would formalize a federal system in Iraq consistent with 
their Constitution that would allow for Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia to 
manage their own affairs, with Baghdad remaining a federal capital 
city.
  It is increasingly clear to me that we should start taking interim 
steps now to facilitate a three-state, one-country solution in Iraq. We 
should begin by acknowledging that many Iraqis whose lives are 
threatened because of their sectarian affiliation are on the move. More 
Iraqis are facing sectarian violence and are considering moving. As 
tragic as these movements seem now, they are preferable to the mass 
migration that would occur if Iraq were to implode.
  There are steps we can take now to ease the process of internal 
migration. We can start by authorizing our commanders on the ground to 
help families who express a desire to relocate to areas where they 
would join a sectarian majority. Relocating families will require 
secure passage to safer areas and reliance probably on economic 
assistance to reestablish them. Those who wish to relocate should be 
assisted in this fashion.
  I don't expect that the Iraqi people will create three completely 
homogeneous regions. In fact, the level of Sunni and Shia marriage 
would preclude such an outcome. We should be attentive to those who 
believe security is enhanced by moving out of mixed neighborhoods, 
where they do not face the danger of sectarian violence.
  Indeed, there was reporting of people swapping houses who were Sunni 
in a dominant Shia area, and Shia in a dominant Sunni area, so they 
would feel more secure after one of their families had been killed or 
kidnapped. I think that makes sense. As populations continue to move, 
we also need to take steps to avert other aspects of an implosion. We 
need to ensure that the Kurdish region, which has been a bedrock of 
stability to this point, remains a stable area. Turkey is rightly 
concerned about the threat of terrorism coming from across the Iraqi 
border. We need to reassure them, and we should bolster 
counterterrorism capabilities of Iraqi forces deployed in that region--
much as we have done in Georgia and in other nations where terrorists 
tried to establish a safe haven and destabilize their region. Our 
military strategy certainly depends on a stable Kurdish region. Our 
political vision of Iraq also requires the Kurdish area to remain 
strong, and I hope we can move quickly to address terrorism issues 
there.
  There are other steps we should take to prepare Iraq for a federal 
political settlement. We must take additional steps to secure the Iraq-
Iranian border, which would be of great benefit to the troops executing 
the surge, as well as mitigate any attempt Iran might make or thinks 
that it has to exploit a future three-state, federal version of Iraq.
  Last, we should place new emphasis on local and provincial elections 
in Iraq.
  I raise these issues because I do not believe we can precipitously 
pull out of Iraq, nor should we. But I think we have to recognize the 
situation on the ground for what it is and facilitate it before we see 
more mass sectarian violence taking place. We can do this and, in a 
civil fashion, save lives. That is what this is about. It is about 
saving lives.
  We have seen this play before. We have seen it recently in 
Yugoslavia. We are seeing it today in Sudan. Why can't we see this and 
say we are going to save lives by facilitating this rather than 
creating a combustible situation that blows up on us later. This is 
consistent with the Iraqi Constitution. It is a more robust political 
solution which matches our need militarily on the ground.
  I finally, say, Mr. President, I have traveled the country a lot. I 
hear a number of people out there. They don't want to lose in Iraq, but 
they don't see us on a track to win. What they are after is us coming 
together here to provide that solution of how we can win. What I am 
talking about is a political solution that is as aggressive as our 
military solution. The military gives us space for the political side 
to act. But we have to get it moving, and that is a situation where we 
can win and we can go to the American people and say we are on track to 
win and be able to pull our forces from the frontlines and reduce the 
death loss we are experiencing as a country, that my State is 
experiencing, that the Big Red One stationed at Fort Riley, KS, is 
experiencing.
  We can do this. We need to show some foresight and bipartisanship to 
get it done. That is why I call, along with my colleague, Senator 
Biden, for this proposal, and I urge other colleagues to join us as 
well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

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