[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 10170-10171]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         IRAQ WAR SUPPLEMENTAL

  Mr. GRAHAM. The President will veto this measure. He should. It is 
one of the worst ideas to ever come out of the Congress in the history 
of warfare that the United States has been engaged in. It sets a date 
for withdrawal. I think it is October. It intrudes on the President's 
Commander in Chief role. It is letting the enemy know exactly what they 
have to do in terms of date and time to win in Iraq. Everyone who dies 
waiting on the time to pass, what have they died for? What have they 
been injured for?
  What I would like to point out is that we should talk about those who 
have lost their lives in Iraq wearing the uniform, and civilians 
included, who have been serving our country. But we shouldn't use their 
deaths as a reason to withdraw from a war we can't afford to lose--and 
we have not lost. We should be honoring their service and their 
sacrifice, their ultimate sacrifice, because they are standing for our 
national security interests. Why do they serve? Why do they go to Iraq? 
Why do they keep reenlisting in the Iraqi theater and the Afghan 
theater at a higher rate than the military as a whole? What do they see 
about Iraq that people here in the Senate are blinded to? Why would 
they keep going back to a war they believe is lost? Why would they go 
three and four times? Why would they enlist at levels beyond any other 
group in the military?
  Because they know after having gone that if we win in Iraq, their 
children, their grandchildren, the Nation as a whole is more secure. 
And if we lose in Iraq, the war is not over, it just gets bigger, and 
the likelihood of their children being involved in a war in the Middle 
East goes up, not down. So that is why they go. That is why they are 
not withdrawing. That is why enlistments are up, not down, because they 
get it.
  The Senate doesn't get it. The Democratic leadership doesn't get it 
at all. Blinded by a dislike of this President, they can't see clearly 
what is going on in Iraq. Whether we should have gone or not is over; 
we are there. There are other people who are there who would like to 
win this war. Al-Qaida is there in large numbers, trying to kill this 
infant democracy, because they know if a democracy can flourish in 
Iraq, their agenda has taken a mighty blow.
  How are they trying to drive us out? By killing civilians and 
coalition forces in as large a number as they can muster.
  So is it going to be the foreign policy of the United States when it 
comes to fighting terrorism that if they can kill enough of us--
whatever that magic number is--we leave? You win? Do you think for one 
moment declaring Iraq lost makes us safer? There is sectarian violence 
in Iraq, but there are plenty of people of the Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish 
persuasions that want the same thing for Iraq that we want. There are 
Shia extremists who want to align with Iran. There are Sunni extremists 
who want to come back in power and have the good old days of Saddam. 
They are in the minority. There is not open civil war in this country. 
There are extremists groups representing the Sunni and the Shia sects 
that are trying to change Iraq for their purposes, bend Iraq to their 
will, against the majority of Iraqis, and in the middle of these sects 
is al-Qaida. In the middle of these sects is Iran.
  Why is Iran playing so hard in Iraq? The biggest nightmare to this 
Iranian theocracy would be a democracy on their border, where different 
groups would live together, where a woman could have a say about her 
children, where people could vote for their leaders, not be dictated to 
from on high. That is why they are playing in Iraq. That is why al-
Qaida is there.
  The question is, Why do we want to leave? It is tough to watch young 
Americans killed and maimed in war, but we didn't start this war. War 
is inevitably about young people getting hurt and getting killed. That 
is why the world--after so many thousands of years, it seems as if 
mankind would have learned that war is not the way, but we haven't 
learned that lesson as mankind. The people who attacked us on September 
11, 2001, there will never be a surrender document negotiated with 
them.
  Iraq was about replacing a dictator who was trying to make a joke of 
U.N. inspections, trying to make the world and his neighbors believe 
that he was acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It was a 
dictatorship that was sending money to suicide bomber families in 
Palestine. It was a dictatorship that was making everything in the 
Middle East harder. It was a dictatorship that was shooting at American 
airplanes every day in violations of U.N. agreements. It was a 
dictatorship that is now in the ash dump of history. From this 
dictatorship we are trying to do something new and different for the 
Mideast, and it will inure to our benefit greatly as a nation: create 
the ability of different people from different backgrounds to vote for 
their leaders, to live under the rule of law, and not the rule of the 
gun. That makes us safer. It changes the Mideast, and it is a great 
blow to the terrorists. That is why they enlist. That is why they keep

[[Page 10171]]

reenlisting. That is why they are dying.
  Now, our majority leader, Senator Reid, who is a fine fellow, and I 
have enjoyed working with him, has made a colossal mistake for the ages 
by declaring this war lost. Not only does it run against the grain of 
the way Americans feel about combat when our Nation is at war, it runs 
against the reality of the consequences of having declared the war 
lost. To me, it shows a lack of understanding of what that statement 
means because when you say the war is lost, the next question to ask 
is, if we lost, who won? In war, there are winners and there are 
losers, and if the majority leader has declared us the loser, then the 
question needs to be asked by the world and this country: Who won that 
war in Iraq?
  Well, I will tell you who will claim credit for winning the war in 
Iraq--al-Qaida. They will put on their Web site and in their propaganda 
to anybody who will listen: We won in Iraq. I guarantee you, if we 
lost, they won. Do you feel comfortable with that as a Senator 
representing the United States of America? I don't.
  Who else won, if we lost? The Shia extremists who are trying to turn 
Iraq into a theocracy aligned with Iran. Does that satisfy you as a 
United States Senator? Is that OK with you? It is certainly not OK with 
me. The Sunni extremists, they won, the ones who are trying to take 
Iraq back to the good old days of Saddam.
  Who are the biggest losers beyond us? We know who the winners are, 
the extremists in Iraq and al-Qaida, the ultimate extreme group. If you 
believe giving these groups Iraq makes us safer, you know nothing about 
human behavior or history as a whole.
  This is not Vietnam, I say to my colleagues. This is the 1930s all 
over again where we have world leaders trying to appease a tyrant--give 
him Czechoslovakia, give him one more country, him being Hitler. Did 
that satisfy his appetite? The moral of the story is that when we let 
tyranny go unchecked, when we give into the dark forces of humanity, 
when we allow people who slaughter the innocent to win wars, we don't 
end their desire, we whet their appetite.
  We have not lost this war. We will never lose this war as long as we 
have the will to win. If we have half the political courage as those 
who reenlist and go back three and four times, or the physical courage, 
there is nothing we can't accomplish in Iraq.
  Some people worry about their next election, and they are trying to 
get right with the polls. My focus is on those who reenlist time and 
again and who are literally sacrificing everything they have to offer 
to their family and to their country.
  So when we mention the death of someone wearing the uniform in the 
service of our Nation as a reason to withdraw from a war we cannot 
afford to lose, shame on this body. This bill will be vetoed. This new 
general, General Petraeus, is committed to winning, has a plan to win, 
and the question is, Are we going to undercut him?
  If you passed the legislation and this legislation went to the 
President's desk and he did not veto it, then you would be cutting the 
legs out from under General Petraeus. You would be making everything 
that he is doing impossible to accomplish because you would change the 
dynamics on the ground so he would have no chance. And, yes, it is 
working. Violence is part of the 21st century. Israel lives with this 
every day. They don't let suicide bombers define the fate of Israel.
  Are we going to let suicide bombers define the foreign policy of the 
United States? If we give them Iraq, you better double the size of the 
military because we are going to go back with a bigger war, not a 
smaller war. So I hope once the President vetoes it, we will understand 
that this new general with a new strategy is our best chance for 
success--with no guarantee because we have made so many mistakes in the 
past.
  The biggest mistake was not having enough people to secure the 
country. If we want political reconciliation, which we know we have to 
achieve to win in Iraq, how can we have it without security? Why don't 
we have security? We let the country get out of control. We didn't have 
enough troops on the ground or enough capacity to train and fight.
  We are doubling the size of the combat capability in Baghdad, and it 
is working. Mr. President, 16 of the 21 sheiks in Anbar Province have 
rejected al-Qaida and aligned with us. Six months ago, Al Anbar 
Province, where the Sunnis live, I would have written off. But now it 
is the greatest success story of the new strategy. We are still losing 
people in Anbar, but we are fighting along with the sheiks to combat 
al-Qaida because they have seen what al-Qaida holds for them and they 
have said, no, they don't want to live under the al-Qaida banner. They 
have tasted it and it doesn't taste well. They are coming our way.
  Four thousand marines in Anbar province are making a huge difference. 
The sheiks, the tribal leaders, called for the young people of Anbar 
Province to join the police--before, we could not get anybody to join 
the Iraqi police--and they came in such large numbers that hundreds 
were turned away because we could not process them. Diyala is a result 
of success in Baghdad. Al-Sadr left Sadr City because we are in there 
now and are going to places we have never gone before. The mayor of 
Sadr City aligned with us, and they tried to kill him. He is in the 
hospital clinging to life. He tasted what the Shia extremists had for 
his people, the Shia, and he said no.
  The only people I know of right now who seem to believe walking away 
from the fight in Iraq doesn't have severe consequences for the world 
are the ones in this body. I cannot envision a failed state in Iraq 
leading to a more secure United States. I cannot envision walking away 
from Iraq, declaring the war lost, not empowering al-Qaida beyond any 
other single event that we have engaged in since 9/11. The consequences 
of destroying General Petraeus's chance to be successful are enormous 
for the national security interests of this country.
  Declaring a war lost by the Senate majority leader is unprecedented, 
ill-advised, and it is something we need to quickly correct because if 
we have lost, the people who will claim victory are our worst 
nightmare. We will be sending young men and women back to the Middle 
East to fight extremism in other countries as far as the eye can see or 
we can give this new general a chance to be successful, give him the 
time, the money, and the resources he needs to be successful, honor 
each death as a noble sacrifice for the cause of our freedom--for our 
own freedom, for the alignment of moderation against extremism--or we 
can let the car bomber and the suicide bomber drive us out of Iraq. We 
can let them dictate our foreign policy.
  If we do that, we can come back home thinking we are safe, but we 
will have unleashed Pandora's box. The Gulf States are next if we lose 
in Iraq, and then eventually Israel. The consequences to our national 
security interests could not be greater.
  Americans understood what it was like to live without freedom 200 
years ago. That is why they died for it. There are people in the 
Mideast getting a taste of it. Let's side with those who believe in 
freedom against those who want to take us to the dark ages.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tester). The Senator from Louisiana is 
recognized.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business on another subject for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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