[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6717-6718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      IRAQIS MUST MEET BENCHMARKS

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, American involvement in Iraq should not 
be an open-ended proposition, and we should not be sending more troops 
there to serve as referees in that nation's devastating civil war.
  The status quo simply cannot continue. It is time this Congress 
seriously level with the Iraqi Government that it

[[Page 6718]]

must meet the benchmarks the President himself outlined earlier this 
year. And if they cannot meet those benchmarks, it is time to start 
bringing our troops home.
  It is time the Iraqi Government is held accountable for its actions. 
The Maliki government must realize that it has to meet political, 
economic and diplomatic benchmarks in the region, and that if serious 
improvements are not seen in the coming months, then we will begin the 
process of redeploying our troops out of Iraq.
  This week, we will have an opportunity to exert pressure on the Iraqi 
Government to meet the President's own benchmarks. If the Iraqi 
Government continues to believe that our involvement there is 
indefinite, what kind of pressure are they going to have to make the 
necessary reforms? They are not, and that's why this change in 
direction is much needed at this time.

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