[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23682]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1415
                  THE ADMINISTRATION'S FAILURE IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Israel). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, over the past 5 years, the Bush 
administration has repeatedly asked the American people to put their 
faith and their judgment in the judgment of the White House, especially 
as it pertains to our position in Iraq.
  But as we have seen, and we have seen it time and time again, that 
judgment is based on ignoring voices of dissent and the reality on the 
ground in favor of a stay-the-course mentality.
  When General Petraeus presents his report on Iraq next week, we 
cannot allow the voice of the American people to be ignored. We watched 
this administration relaunch its public relations campaign to sell 
``the escalation'' to the American people, and now they insist that the 
escalation is working. All this in spite of the Iraqi Government's 
failure to achieve most of its key benchmarks for military and 
political progress and the dramatic increase in American and Iraqi 
casualties since the escalation began.
  The administration continues, Mr. Speaker, to resist all attempts 
supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans to bring our troops 
home. In essence, we are in the middle of another PR campaign, this one 
to stifle the will and undermine the judgment of the American people 
again.
  Today Congress is again faced with the choice of trusting its own 
judgment or the claims of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the 
past miscalculation and failed predictions of the administration have 
resulted in tragic consequences.
  In 2003, the administration insisted that an invasion force of 
130,000 troops would be enough to secure Iraq and restore peace after 
the invasion. They claimed Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass 
destruction to use against our country. They promised that we would be 
greeted as liberators, and in May 2005 we were told that the insurgency 
in Iraq was in its last throes. Time after time, they have been wrong, 
wrong, wrong.
  Earlier this year when Congress passed the emergency spending bill 
for Iraq, the Bush administration argued that benchmarks are the only 
way to measure progress in Iraq. As a result, the Government 
Accountability Office released a report this week showing that Iraq has 
failed 11 out of 18 benchmarks. And those seven that did not fail were 
barely, barely worked upon at all. In response, the administration now 
claims that these benchmarks should no longer be used to measure 
progress. It is clear that the administration will never accept the 
reality about Iraq. The only way to end the violence is to fully fund a 
safe and orderly redeployment from Iraq.
  The shallow fortune-telling of the Bush administration cannot replace 
what every American knows: The only right course in Iraq is to bring 
our troops home by fully funding a safe redeployment of our troops and 
military contractors. The American people want bold leadership, and 
they have called on the Congress to take action, action now. The 
occupation has been a total failure and the American people will not 
accept taking a wait-and-see attitude. They know that the only sensible 
moral and responsible course is to fully fund the redeployment of our 
American troops and military contractors. And they want us to get 
started on it now.

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