[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27020-27021]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      END THIS ENDLESS WAR IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, on this unfortunate day 5 years ago, a 
majority of this House enabled President Bush to proceed with his 
tragic ``go it alone'' war. He was dead certain then, and he was dead 
wrong then. He is dead certain today, and once again dead wrong. As a 
result of his choices, we approach now some 4,000 Americans whose lives 
have been lost, perhaps as many as another 30,000 who have been 
disabled.
  Our Treasury, of course, has been disabled of what is scheduled to be 
probably a trillion or more dollars out of our Treasury that could have 
been spent right here at home on more causes that would have touched 
and protected the American people, their health care and economic 
security.
  After this 5 years, I think it is important to look back and realize 
that despite the position of the Republican leadership, the Republican 
administration, and most of the Democratic administration, that in this 
House that day 5 years ago, a substantial majority of House Democrats 
voted against this war that should never have been launched.

[[Page 27021]]

  We say today that the best course for this country to pursue is a new 
course, a change of course, not just more of the same old thing as the 
President proposed in his escalation, as he has implemented in his 
escalation, but a genuine change in course.
  We need to end this endless war in Iraq. We really already have a 
blueprint of how to do it, how to implement a safe and orderly 
redeployment. The United Kingdom, the only one of our allies to offer 
any substantial help in Iraq, is already redeploying and seems to be 
indicating that their troops will be out of Iraq next year. We need to 
join that coalition, the coalition of refocusing on priorities here at 
home, because what we have done in Iraq has not made our families 
safer. As one independent study after another has shown, what we have 
done there has made our families much less safe than had this adventure 
never been launched.
  For the last 5 years, this administration has repeatedly presented us 
with false choices. Remember, there would be a mushroom cloud, perhaps, 
if we waited to find the smoking gun to justify the invasion of Iraq to 
find all these weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Now we 
hear the same old deadly course is the only alternative to a 
``precipitous withdrawal.'' Well, I don't know of anyone who is 
proposing a precipitous withdrawal. There are other reasonable 
alternatives. We believe that the better course, a new course, is a 
safe, orderly, fully funded, phased redeployment. The British already 
have this underway.

                              {time}  1845

  The British already have this underway. We can follow their example, 
and we can follow the leadership of the American people reflected in 
one study after another, that they want that kind of change in course.
  The choice to redeploy or not is a decision about priorities. While 
it is true that the big cost of what we are doing there is measured in 
the blood of the brave, we are also hemorrhaging some $3 billion in 
Iraq expenditures right out of our Treasury, week after week, month 
after month.
  The President vetoed the Children's Health Insurance bill, because 
even too little for our children seems to be too much for him. Half a 
trillion dollars for a war already that he chose in Iraq, but for the 
children of America's working poor, he brusquely tells us, they can 
just go to the emergency room. With millions of children uninsured, it 
is too soon to declare ``mission accomplished'' there, just as it was 
too soon for him to make that declaration years back and many deaths 
back in Iraq.
  In Iraq and with the Children's Health Insurance Program, we believe 
that the President is on the wrong course and that we cannot afford to 
wait until he departs office to end this war and to end the 
indifference that he has shown toward our children.
  This fifth anniversary then should be commemorated with thoughtful 
consideration of alternatives for new courses and new avenues to 
address the tremendous damage that has been done by this faulty policy 
of preemptive war. I believe that we need in these next few months to 
continue to focus on the wrongs that have been committed, the damage 
that has been done, and bring people together behind a genuinely new 
course that we have not tried before, and that is a complete but 
phased, safe and orderly, fully-funded redeployment of our troops that 
will protect our families, that will assure our Nation's security, and 
will not continue with the hemorrhaging that we have suffered these 
last many years.

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