[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27165-27166]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                IRAQ WAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page 27166]]


  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, Members, last Friday, Retired Lieutenant 
General Ricardo Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq following the 
invasion in 2003, became the latest in a growing list of retired 
military officers who harshly criticize the war in Iraq. He said that 
the United States is ``living a nightmare with no end in sight.'' 
General Sanchez also lambasted the latest strategy in Iraq calling it, 
again, ``a desperate attempt by the administration that has not 
accepted the political and economic realities of this war.''
  These startling revelations from the highest ranks of our military 
should shake us to our very core. The man who was personally 
responsible for conducting the war in Iraq is trying to convince us 
that we should have no faith in the administration now waging the war.
  General Sanchez went on to say, ``There has been a glaring 
unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our 
national leaders,'' and that ``the American people must hold them 
accountable.''
  But, General Sanchez, how can the American people hold their elected 
officials accountable? As we all know, they can make a lot of noise by 
calling congressional offices, writing letters, and attending marches; 
but at the end of the day, the American people hold their elected 
officials accountable at the ballot box.
  To my colleagues in the House of Representatives, our constituents 
have already made up their minds. An overwhelming majority of people 
think it was a mistake to invade Iraq and believe that setting a 
timetable for withdrawal is the correct course of action. Most 
Democrats and Republicans agree that an open-ended occupation of Iraq 
is an awful idea. But the Iraqi people don't want us there, and we have 
no timetable for withdrawal.
  What do we have if not an open-ended occupation? What more do we need 
to learn before deciding that this war must be brought to a halt? Day 
after day, the grim realities unfolding in Iraq paint a picture of 
futility and mismanagement. More lives are lost, more money is 
squandered, and Iraq falls deeper and deeper into chaos and civil war.
  President Bush has had our military in pursuit of a victory that is 
perpetually ``just around the corner.'' Well, we have been around the 
corner and back again. There is no victory to be found. The time to end 
this debacle has long since passed. The United States military presence 
has reinforced in the minds of the Iraqis the most damaging lesson an 
emerging nation can learn: that problems are solved with bullets and 
bombs instead of compromise and cooperation. Instead of encouraging 
compromise and fostering cooperation among the various warring tribes, 
we have done the exact opposite. We continue to spend billions of 
dollars blindly arming Iraqis who volunteer to serve in the Iraqi 
security forces with no thought as to where their loyalties might lie 
when we hand them weapons.
  On one hand, as Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies points out, we have not addressed the degree to 
which all elements of the Iraqi security forces, from the Prime 
Minister's office down, have links to Shiite efforts to retain and 
expand power and carry out sectarian cleansing in mixed areas.
  On the other hand, the bottom-up reconciliation that Bush brags about 
is arming and empowering the Sunni militias in Anbar province and 
elsewhere. This is, as a recent article in the Economist suggests, a 
recipe for civil war and only serves to undermine the central 
government of Iraq.
  These irresponsible and dangerous tactics not only harm future 
prospects for stability in Iraq, but seriously erode our standing in 
the Middle East and larger international community.
  I would like to commend General Sanchez for speaking out against the 
Bush administration. But how many more General Sanchezes will it take 
before the last Congressperson turns against the occupation of Iraq? 
How many more investigations of Blackwater's abuse, of Halliburton's 
fraud, how many more reports of our overstretched military at its 
breaking point, or about the damage our occupation is doing to our 
international standing? How much more of this debate do we need before 
our national leaders accept that the Iraq war is actually making our 
country less safe?
  For the good of this great Nation and for the good of Iraq, it is 
time to bring our troops home and end the occupation of Iraq.
  Mr. Speaker and Members, I know that there is an attempt to put a 
good face on the surge and to try and make us believe that the surge is 
working, but just read your newspapers every day and see the number of 
lives that are being lost, not only of our own soldiers, but of the 
Iraqis.

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