[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 851-852]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have lost about 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. 
Thirty-five thousand have been wounded. About a third of them have been 
grievously wounded. As we know, about 40 percent of the men and women 
coming back from Iraq have what is now called--we used to call it, 
after the Second World War, shell shock. Now they call it post-
traumatic stress syndrome.
  I just wrote a letter to the Nevada parents of a young man who was 
killed. I have done that lots of times. I was unable to speak to them, 
and that is why I wrote the letter. Most of them I try to visit. But 
the family has been split up a little bit, and it was not possible for 
me to do that.
  Mr. President, I hope we can figure out a way to get our troops home 
soon. General Petraeus said the war cannot be won military, and every 
day that goes by that is proven certainly so. The Iraqi Government has 
nothing to move toward a settlement of this situation. There are far 
too many stories like Josh.
  I hope we can work on a bipartisan basis on many matters. We hope, 
for this package which is coming from the House maybe sometime next 
week dealing with the stimulus, that we can work on a bipartisan basis. 
From all accounts I got yesterday, that, in fact, will be the case. 
Senators Baucus and Grassley, who have jurisdiction of 85 or 90 percent 
of the potential matters that go into the bill, have indicated they are 
going to have a bipartisan markup next week, and hopefully we can take 
a look at that piece of legislation in a bipartisan way and get it to 
the President as quickly as possible. There are many other things we 
have to work on, on a bipartisan basis, and I look forward to that.
  I say with all due respect to my friend--and he is my friend--the 
Republican leader, that one thing the President has done and done very 
well these past years is frighten the American people, and it appears 
we are entering into another zone of frightening the American people. 
It started a couple of days ago with the Vice President, and the 
President followed him by a day, and we have the State of the Union 
coming. It is obvious that this FISA bill--which I hope something works 
out so it can be passed, but unless there is a way to amend it, it 
certainly doesn't appear that it is going to be. The President's State 
of the Union and certainly leading up to it will,

[[Page 852]]

again, frighten the American people. The best way to take that away is 
for the President to work with us. Are we asking for the impossible?
  There have been efforts to amend this FISA legislation. In title I, 
there are probably five or six amendments we would want to vote on. 
Title II, which deals with immunity, Senators Dodd and Feingold for a 
long time have said they wish to have a vote on that. That is not 
unreasonable. Many of us support that. I can't imagine why we can't 
move forward on that, unless this is something the President wants to 
ratchet up so that he has something to frighten the American people 
about on Monday night when he gives his State of the Union, that we are 
not protecting the American people. We are protecting the American 
people, just as this young man, Josh, was, whom the Republican leader 
talked about. I wrote a letter, as I indicated, to the Gaul family a 
couple of days ago.
  We need to enter into a new era of bipartisanship where we are not 
frightening the American people but we are trying to work with the 
American people, to move out of some of the areas in which we find 
ourselves bogged down. I hope this year will allow us to do that.

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