[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5455-5456]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           NO PLAN B IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker and my esteemed colleagues, one of the most 
grievous blunders in the whole Iraq debacle was the total failure to 
figure out what we would do after toppling Saddam Hussein. The 
architects of this war thought that was the whole task. Mission 
accomplished.
  There was no plan for how to manage the aftermath. No plan for 
keeping the peace in a country with deep sectarian divisions, no plan 
for how to institute democracy in a society with no democratic 
infrastructure or institutions. Well, now we see history repeating 
itself, because The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Bush 
administration and top military commanders apparently have no idea what 
the next step is if the troop escalation plan fails, which General 
Petraeus himself believes probably will.
  The Post reports that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
Peter Pace, told a meeting of the Nation's Governors: ``I'm a Marine, 
and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory.''
  Well, confidence is one thing. Single mindedness is another, and, 
frankly, if the Bush national security team had a better track record 
of smart decisions and strategic successes, I might be willing to give 
them the benefit of the doubt. But as it turns out, these folks have 
been wrong, very wrong, throughout most of this occupation.
  Indeed, when President Bush announced the so-called surge nearly 2 
months ago, he essentially conceded that mistakes had been made and not 
everything his administration has done in Iraq has gone by design.
  But as yesterday's Post article points out, we are way beyond plan B. 
This is more like plan D. There have been many times that we have been 
told the necessary adjustments are being made to achieve victory, 
whatever that means, in the context of Iraq.
  But here we are, 4 years into this war, still spinning our wheels and 
nearly 3,200 Americans dead, and the ones who come home in one piece 
sent to military hospitals that are in deplorable conditions, often 
delivering substandard care. How many more chances does the Bush 
administration get to make things right in Iraq? I say: none. There is 
only one solution: bring our troops home in short order as soon as 
logistically and safely as possible.

                              {time}  1700

  In a way, actually, all the discussion about whether plan A, B, C, D, 
is, at best, something of a distraction is like arguing about what was 
the worst part of a root canal. The fact is, the whole Iraq enterprise 
was fundamentally flawed from the beginning and never should have been 
launched in the first place. There is not much we can do now

[[Page 5456]]

to reverse the unforgivable mistake of this Iraq occupation and the 
unspeakable damages done, but we can do something to ensure it doesn't 
last a minute longer. We can here in the United States Congress use our 
Constitutional powers to ensure that not one more family has to lose a 
son or daughter, a husband or wife, a mother or father for someone 
else's ideological mess.
  It is time, Mr. Speaker. It is time for this tragic chapter in 
American history to finally end. It is time to bring our troops home.

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