[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23381-23383]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, during August, as many Members of this 
body did, I traveled to Iraq, met with Tennesseans there, met with 
General Petraeus, General Odierno. Then I traveled to Tennessee and 
discussed my visit and listened.
  I want to talk for a few minutes about where I believe we should go 
from here in Iraq. The strongest message I received, both in Iraq and 
in Tennessee, was this--not that we get out, not that we even win a 
victory of the kind we won in Japan or Germany, but it is time for the 
United States Government to speak with one voice on Iraq.
  A retired four star general from Tennessee, who has a lot of 
experience with the special forces, put it this way to me: He said our 
biggest problem in Iraq is we are divided and the enemy knows it.
  It is inexcusable that we in the Senate should spend so much time 
lecturing political leaders in Baghdad for their failure to come up 
with a consensus when we ourselves have not been able to come up with a 
consensus about Iraq.
  It is time for the Government to speak with a single voice about 
where we go from here in Iraq. Our troops deserve it and our enemy 
needs to hear it. I believe that one voice would be a new strategy to 
change our mission in Iraq from combat to supporting, equipping, and 
training the Iraqi troops, and then stabilizing Iraq province by 
province, neighborhood by neighborhood, tribe by tribe.
  If we adopt this new strategy as a nation, and if we speak clearly to 
our troops and to the enemy with one voice, I believe this would likely 
bring home half our troops within a year or two.
  Such a new strategy would put us on a path to finish responsibly what 
we have undertaken in Iraq. I believe there is a consensus within this 
body for such a new strategy. I believe that consensus is sitting there 
staring us in the face.
  The strategy I am describing would implement the unanimous 
recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group chaired by former 
Secretary of State Jim Baker, a Republican, and former Congressman Lee 
Hamilton, a Democrat. It would take into account the lessons and 
successes of the last few months under the leadership of General 
Petraeus in Iraq.
  Basically the new strategy I am describing would implement the 
recommendations of Baker-Hamilton province by province. The Baker-
Hamilton strategy, the one I am describing, would be grounded upon 
three basic principles. First, the United States will begin immediately 
to move our forces in Iraq out of direct combat and into roles of 
support, training, and providing equipment as security conditions on 
the ground permit.
  This will proceed province by province as Iraqis demonstrate their 
capacity to manage their own security as they have, for example, in 
Anbar Province where President Bush visited yesterday.
  Generals Petraeus and Odierno told a group of us Senators about 10 
days ago that they believe that 6 or 7 provinces are on the way to 
being ready for this sort of mission change and this sort of 
stabilization. We have seen it in Anbar. We saw it in northern Baghdad 
where we flew by helicopter to an edge of Baghdad where about 70 
American troops were living in a neighborhood. We had dinner with two 
Sunni sheiks, two Shiite sheiks, and we talked about the progress 
there.
  What had happened is that the Iraqis had simply become exhausted with 
terrorists of various kinds killing their relatives and terrorizing 
their neighborhoods. One of the sheiks with whom we had dinner had seen 
his teenage son murdered in his front yard.
  When sufficient American forces, coalition forces, had come to the 
neighborhood to work with the fed-up Iraqis, they had proceeded 
basically to run the terrorists out of town. It was much easier for 
them to tell, as they said, who are bad guys than for us to tell who 
they are. They described them as various groups of thugs, criminals, 
insurgents, militias, all there for no good. But when the Iraqis began 
to man the checkpoints and when Iraqis worked on the neighborhood 
watch, and when 600 of their sons were sent to Baghdad to the police 
academy, as had been done with the prospect that they would then come 
back and help, then the American officers there said: It may not be 
long before we are able to shift our mission from combat to support, 
equipping, and training of the Iraqi troops for this area.
  Now, that is not to say that means instantly in every part of Iraq 
things will be safe. They certainly were not while we were there. Two 
province governors were assassinated within a 2-week period of time 
just before we came. Fourteen Americans lost their lives in a 
helicopter crash 2 days before we were there. On the day we were there, 
we found out later, two suicide bombers had gone to the nearest other 
outpost such as the one we visited and killed 4 people and wounded 11 
others.
  There is plenty of danger left in Iraq. But there is no mistaking the 
fact that when we begin to see--and under Petraeus's leadership we 
begin to have--those outposts around Baghdad, and work with the Iraqis 
in certain parts of the country, significant military progress is being 
made.

[[Page 23382]]

  So the first principle of a new strategy would be to change the 
mission of our troops province by province. The second principle would 
be to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq but one that would steadily 
diminish over time.
  The troops who would remain would be there to keep Iraq from turning 
into a terrorist haven--troops who would be embedded with training 
Iraqi Army units and police, those troops necessary for force 
protection and for search and rescue and for intelligence.
  The final principle would be we would step up regional and diplomatic 
efforts to press others in the region to help Iraq succeed. Those 
efforts are now well underway with a more expansive United Nations 
assistance mission for Iraq.
  There is plenty of evidence that a new strategy such as the one I 
have described can attract a consensus here in the Senate and in the 
Congress, and I believe in the country. To begin with, while he has not 
adopted the Baker-Hamilton recommendation, the President has praised 
the report and has adopted parts of the report. The Democratic 
leadership has adopted many parts of the report and, in fact, the main 
difference, it seems, separating that side and this side in coming to a 
consensus is whether there should be a specific deadline, which the 
Baker-Hamilton commission rejects.
  Some have said, well, that means the Baker-Hamilton recommendations 
are toothless, do not have effect. Well, I see the Senator from West 
Virginia here. He will remember exactly what I am about to say. My 
grandfather was a railway engineer for the Santa Fe Railway. His job 
was to drive large locomotives onto what was then called a roundtable. 
The roundtable's job was to turn that huge locomotive around and head 
down a different track in a different direction. Once the roundtable 
had turned the locomotive around and put it on a different track, there 
was no getting on the other track. You might not know exactly how fast 
it would go down the new track, and you might have different engineers, 
but it was headed down a different track. I believe the Baker-Hamilton 
recommendations, as updated by General Petraeus's experiences, would 
begin to put our country on a new track with a new strategy in Iraq 
that would cause us responsibly to finish our job there and could begin 
to develop a consensus on both sides of the aisle.
  In the Congress there is now bipartisan legislation that would make 
the Iraq Study Group recommendations our national policy. In the 
Senate, the legislation sponsored by the Senator from Colorado, Senator 
Salazar, a Democrat, and myself, has 15 sponsors, 8 Democrats and 7 
Republicans. In the House of Representatives, the Udall-Wolf 
legislation, the same legislation as Salazar-Alexander, has 60 
sponsors, 26 Democrats, and 34 Republicans.
  If the President of the United States and the Democratic leadership 
in the Senate supported this bipartisan legislation, I am convinced it 
would get 75 votes and we would speak with one voice on Iraq to our 
troops and to our enemy. If the President and the Democratic leadership 
simply did not oppose this legislation, I believe it would attract a 
majority of votes in the Senate, maybe 60 votes. The Congress could 
enact this legislation by the end of the month. The President could 
sign it immediately. He could then begin to implement its 
recommendations moving us in a new strategy down a different track in 
Iraq and report to us, as the legislation requires, every 90 days.
  This is not a perfect option. The Baker-Hamilton group is 10 
distinguished Americans--including Ed Meese, President Reagan's 
Attorney General; Vernon Jordan, from the National Urban League; Larry 
Eagleburger, Sandra Day O'Connor, President Clinton's Secretary of 
Defense, President Clinton's former chief of staff, Secretary Baker, 
Chairman Hamilton; Chuck Robb, a former Member of this body; Alan 
Simpson, a former Member of this body--a very diverse group, five 
Democrats, five Republicans. They met for 9 months. They were unanimous 
on their 79 recommendations. That did not mean they agreed with every 
single recommendation. But, taken as a whole, they said we can go from 
here to there in Iraq. This is how we do it. This is how we go.
  What are the other options? I can understand the Democratic leader 
wanting to have a vote on withdrawal immediately with a deadline. Many 
Members, maybe every Member on the other side, would vote for that. I 
respect that. But I would respectfully say we are not going to have a 
consensus on that approach. Too many of us believe it would strand 
people who had been loyal in Iraq. Too many of us believe it would not 
sufficiently honor the lives and the treasure we have invested in Iraq. 
Too many of us believe there is too great a risk of turning over Iraq 
to terrorists. And if none of those arguments make a difference, it is 
simply logistically impossible to move 160,000 American soldiers and 
marines and airmen out of Iraq overnight. So for all those reasons, 
while we might have a vote on withdrawal immediately with a deadline, 
there can't be the kind of consensus that we need in the Senate.
  On the other hand, I can understand those, many on this side, who say 
we should stay the course for a victory in Iraq. But this is not Japan 
or Germany. After World War II, we had millions of troops in Japan and 
Germany for a long time. We had an entire division in Germany which did 
nothing but wait to see where their might be trouble and then go to 
snuff it out. We were working with two countries which were homogeneous 
and which had been nations for a long time. We didn't have there the 
same circumstances we have in Iraq. There is not the possibility of the 
same kind of victory in Iraq that we had in Japan and Germany. We are 
spending $2 billion plus a week. We are losing two to three American 
lives each day. Our armed services are stretched thin. Most of the 
soldiers I talked with--and they are not complaining--were there for 
their second or third tour of duty, and some were expecting to come 
back again.
  Finally, I don't believe we can sustain a stay-the-course policy in 
Iraq because there is not the support for that among the American 
people.
  I suppose there is another option that one could try. The President 
and some on the ground in Iraq might be tempted to simply say: Let's 
continue the surge for a while longer because already in some places, 
as I have described--in Anbar Province, in four or five others, in 
northern Baghdad where we were--already in some places there is 
demonstration that we are having some military success. But a surge 
would be open-ended, a surge by itself. A surge is a tactic; it is not 
a strategy. We need a strategy about where we go from here.
  When I go back to Tennessee, I don't have Tennesseans rushing up to 
me to tell me what to do about Iraq. They expect me to have some idea 
about what to do about Iraq, to say where we go from here, and then 
they will critique that and tell me whether they agree.
  I believe there is not sufficient public support for the President 
simply to go before the American people and say: Let's continue the 
surge. We know if we put 25,000, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 of our 
tremendous American troops in a particular place in Iraq, there will be 
some good results. We have already seen it. But a surge by itself does 
not answer the question. In fact, it never has answered the question: 
Where do we go from here in Iraq? How do we finish the job responsibly? 
That is the question.
  The surge can be a part of the new strategy. The Baker-Hamilton 
recommendations in December specifically said that as they called for a 
new strategy that included change of mission. But a surge was a tactic, 
a part of the strategy, not the strategy itself.
  If none of those options are promising for a consensus within this 
body and in the House of Representatives and the country, then where 
does that leave us? It leaves us somewhere in the middle, which is 
often, in a democracy, the right place to be. My father used to say: 
Finish what you start. We need to finish the job in Iraq.
  George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary, wrote a book, 
``Twilight of the Presidents,'' in which he described the job of the 
President--see

[[Page 23383]]

an urgent need, develop the right strategy, but, third, persuade at 
least half the people he is right. We can and no doubt will have votes 
in this body on withdrawal with a deadline. We will probably have votes 
on stay the course and victory. We will probably have a vote on 
indefinite continuation of the surge. But there is not a possibility of 
consensus on any of these approaches.
  There is a good prospect for consensus on a strategy based upon the 
Baker-Hamilton principles, updated by the lessons and successes of 
General Petraeus. If the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group, the Baker-
Hamilton group, over 9 months could agree unanimously on where we go 
from here in Iraq, surely 50 or 60 or 70 of us can agree on where we go 
from here in Iraq.
  I look forward to the President's report. I look forward to General 
Petraeus's recommendations. He has demonstrated that he is an 
exceptional leader. We Tennesseans have a special pride in him because 
of his leadership of the 101st Airborne Division. But once General 
Petraeus has made those recommendations, I hope the President takes a 
page from a former President of this country whom President Bush 
admires, Harry Truman.
  In 1947, Harry Truman found himself in about the same shape President 
Bush finds himself today. Americans were tired of war, even though in 
that case we had won it. The President's poll numbers were very low. 
The President had lost both Houses of Congress in the preceding 
election. The President had an urgent overseas mission that he hoped 
our country would adopt. According to David McCullough, the biographer 
of President Truman, Truman said if he sent a plan with his name on it 
up there to the Senate and the House, it would quiver a couple of times 
and die. So he called in General George C. Marshall who was his 
Secretary of State, and he called in Dean Acheson. He said: Let's call 
it the Marshall plan and go up to Arthur Vandenberg, the leader of the 
opposition in the Senate, and try to persuade him it is the right thing 
to do.
  We got the Marshall plan, and Truman today is remembered as a near 
great President. I am certain that President Bush believes as firmly in 
his heart that finishing the job in Iraq is as essential today as 
President Truman believed the Marshall plan was essential in 1947. But 
President Bush, I hope, will also remember the lesson of Harry Truman 
and borrow the recommendations and the prestige of the Baker-Hamilton 
group and borrow the lessons and successes of a distinguished general--
in this case General Petraeus--and give us a plan that is a genuinely 
new strategy, one that can attract significant support on that side of 
the aisle as well as this, one that, like my grandfather's big round 
table with the locomotive, can take our country and put it on a 
different track in Iraq that will assure us of that and that will cause 
us to change our mission for our troops from combat to supporting, 
equipping, and training, province by province, as soon as we honorably 
can.
  If it does, as I said earlier, I believe we will see about half our 
troops come home within a year or two. The principles also include a 
long-term but steadily diminishing presence in Iraq to fight 
counterterrorism and a stepped-up effort for diplomatic and political 
efforts especially in the region. But if the President were to do this, 
and if the Democratic leadership would make room for consensus in this 
body, we could end this spectacle of the U.S. Congress lecturing 
Baghdad for being in a political stalemate when we are in one 
ourselves. We can speak with a single voice. We are elected to be able 
to do so. Our troops deserve it. The enemy needs to hear it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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