[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6131-6132]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. PENCE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  By the end of 2006, most Americans could see that our strategy in 
Iraq was not working. In January of this year, President Bush outlined 
his plan to win the war in Iraq. And just last week, Speaker Pelosi and 
the Democrat majority announced their plan to end the war in Iraq. The 
only problem with that, Mr. Speaker, is that, as George Orwell wrote, 
the quickest way to end the war is to lose it, and I believe that the 
Democratic plan to micromanage our war in Iraq with benchmarks and 
deadlines for withdrawal is a prescription for retreat and defeat.
  Common sense and the Constitution teach us that Congress can declare 
war. Congress can fund or choose not to fund war. But Congress must not 
ever attempt to conduct war. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle to heed the call of the Constitution and common sense and reject 
the Pelosi plan for retreat and defeat in Iraq.
  It turns out, Mr. Speaker, that I am actually not alone in my concern 
about the constitutionality and the commonsense value of the current 
plan for withdrawal from Iraq being propounded by the majority. The 
newspaper of record in the home State of Speaker Pelosi, the Los 
Angeles Times, wrote an editorial yesterday under the title ``Do We 
Really Need a General Pelosi?'' adding ``Congress can cut funding for 
Iraq, but it shouldn't micromanage the war.'' Allow me to quote further 
from yesterday's lead editorial in the Los Angeles Times:
  ``After weeks of internal strife, House Democrats have brought forth 
their proposal for forcing President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from 
Iraq by 2008. The plan is an unruly mess: bad public policy, bad 
precedent and bad politics. If the legislation passes, Bush says he'll 
veto it, as well he should.''
  The Los Angeles Times editorial board went on:
  ``It was one thing for the house to pass a nonbinding vote of 
disapproval. It's quite another for it to set out a detailed timetable 
with specific benchmarks and conditions for the continuation of the 
conflict.''
  The L.A. Times asked, ``Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower had been forced 
to adhere to a congressional war plan in scheduling the Normandy 
landings or if, in 1863, President Lincoln had been forced by Congress 
to conclude the Civil War by the following year.''
  They conclude, ``This is the worst kind of congressional meddling in 
military strategy,'' adding, ``By interfering with the discretion of 
the Commander in Chief and military leaders in order to fulfill 
domestic political needs, Congress undermines whatever prospects remain 
of a successful outcome.''
  And even in today's Washington Post, another lion of the liberal 
media in America, under the lead editorial headline, The Pelosi Plan 
for Iraq, they write:
  ``In short, the Democrat proposal to be taken up this week is an 
attempt to impose detailed management on a war without regard to the 
war itself.''
  The Washington Post adds: ``Congress should rigorously monitor the 
Iraqi government's progress on those benchmarks. By Mr. Bush's own 
account, the purpose of the troop surge in Iraq is to enable political 
process. If progress does not occur, the military strategy should be 
reconsidered.''
  But here is the key line in the Washington Post lead editorial today: 
``But aggressive oversight is quite different from mandating military 
steps according to an inflexible timetable conforming to the need to 
capture votes in Congress or at the 2008 polls.''
  It is truly extraordinary how politics and common sense and the 
Constitution can make such strange bedfellows. I scarcely think, Mr. 
Speaker, that I have ever come to the floor of this House and quoted at 
any length the lead editorial in either the Washington Post or the Los 
Angeles Times. Those two newspapers tend to bookend the country from a 
liberal perspective in the media. But in both cases, both newspapers 
have identified what I asserted in the beginning, that my colleagues 
should heed the call of the Constitution and common sense and reject 
the Pelosi plan for retreat and defeat in Iraq.
  It is the purview of the Congress to declare war. It is the purview 
of this Congress to vote up or down on whether we should continue to 
fund military operations. And I would never question that right. But it 
is not the purview of the Congress, according to our history and 
Constitution and tradition, to interpose our will, our decisions, our 
timetables, on military commanders in the field.
  I will close, Mr. Speaker, by simply saying that we do have but one 
choice in Iraq and that is victory. It is my hope and prayer that after 
much political debate here in Congress, we will

[[Page 6132]]

give our soldiers the resources they need to achieve victory in Iraq 
and bring home a much-deserved freedom for those good people and 
another victory for freedom for the American people.

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