[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2520-2551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




PROVIDING FOR THE SAFE REDEPLOYMENT OF UNITED STATES TROOPS FROM IRAQ--
                           MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as we take up the issue of Iraq once 
again, the question that should be foremost in our minds is this: Has 
the situation improved since the Petraeus plan was put into place? And 
if so, if the terrorists who have been murdering coalition and Iraqi 
soldiers and civilians there for years are now seriously wounded and on 
the run, as we are told they are, then the obvious followup question is 
this: How do we ensure that the progress not only continues but 
actually lasts?
  Our friends on the other side never seem to let the facts get in the 
way of their proposals for securing Iraq. When the President announced 
a new counterinsurgency strategy last year, many of them said it would 
not work. Even the plan's most vocal critics voted to confirm the 
general who would carry it out. The junior Senator from Illinois 
embodied this approach when he predicted: The President's strategy will 
not work, and then cast a vote confirming General Petraeus for the job. 
Then, when General Petraeus returned from Iraq to report that the 
strategy was bearing fruit, some of our friends on the other side 
covered their ears and questioned his integrity.
  The junior Senator from New York embodied this view when she said the 
general's report required ``a willing suspension of disbelief,'' then 
voted against a resolution that condemned an ad accusing him of lies. 
And now, after months of positive reports on improved safety and even 
important political progress, some of our friends on the other side 
once again want to cut funding for the troops.
  In the words of the first Feingold bill that we might be voting on, 
they want to ``promptly transition the mission.'' They want to tear up 
the Petraeus plan and cut off funds for the very troops who are 
carrying it out.

[[Page 2521]]

  The second Feingold bill is just as odd. It would require the Bush 
administration, now in its final months, to set out a new global 
strategy for fighting terrorism even as our military fights the 
terrorists neighborhood by neighborhood in Iraq and even as 
congressional Democrats continue to block a bipartisan surveillance 
bill that we know would improve our ability to disrupt terrorist plots. 
The second Feingold bill would also require reducing the pace of 
deployments and an increase in overall military readiness. This would 
mean not only full funding for the Defense Department but also 
directing an even greater share of the Nation's resources to defense--
something the junior Senator from Wisconsin has not been known to 
champion in the past.
  In other words, the second Feingold bill claims to advance an 
effective antiterrorist program even though the first one attempts to 
block a counterinsurgency plan that even early critics of the war are 
now calling a success. It calls for a new strategy against al-Qaida 
even while Democrats in the House block one of the most effective tools 
we have in the fight against al-Qaida.
  All of which leads me to wonder, what possible deduction of reason 
has prompted our friends on the other side to believe either of these 
bills is a good idea? We already know what will happen to the first 
bill. Last year, we overwhelmingly rejected it--not just once but four 
times. It never achieved more than 29 votes. And that was before the 
success of the Petraeus plan.
  But given what has happened since then, the proposal to cut funds, to 
scrap the Petraeus plan, makes even less sense today. Just consider 
what has taken place in Iraq over the last year.
  Since the implementation of the Petraeus plan, violence in Iraq has 
fallen dramatically. Over the past year, civilian deaths are one-sixth 
of what they were in November of 2006. High-profile bombings are down 
by two-thirds since June. The discovery and seizure of guns and other 
weapons caches has more than doubled nationally and tripled in Anbar. 
The worst kind of violence is dramatically down. Ethno-sectarian 
conflict--the fighting has fallen from a peak of about 1,100 incidents 
in December of 2006 to about 100 such incidents this past November. 
That is less than 1 year. Locals are energized about fighting back 
against terrorists, with between 70,000 and 100,000 ordinary citizens 
stepping forward to help local police root out terrorists. And the 
terrorists themselves are becoming demoralized, with even those who 
share their religious beliefs driving them into hiding.
  This kind of progress is changing minds. One harsh early critic of 
the war, Anthony Cordesman, recently visited Iraq, looked at the new 
data, and came to a different conclusion.
  Here is what Anthony Cordesman says now:

       No one can spend 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq 
     without seeing major progress in every area. If the U.S. 
     provides sustained support to the Iraqi Government, in 
     security, governance, and development, there is now a very 
     real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable 
     state.

  A very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable 
state. These are the words of a man whose judgment our friends on the 
other side were appealing to just last year in arguing for withdrawal. 
Last July, the junior Senator from New Jersey, speaking on the Senate 
floor, cited the opinion of Mr. Cordesman before declaring: Mr. 
President, it is over; your failed strategy, your ill-conceived war 
must come to an end before more damage is done.
  All of this reminds me of something we saw last summer after the New 
York Times ran an op-ed by two early critics of the war who had begun 
to change their views on the Petraeus plan once those views became 
inconsistent with the facts on the ground. About a week after the piece 
appeared in print, the senior Senator from Illinois concurred with its 
central point, after early and outspoken opposition to the Petraeus 
plan.

       More American troops have brought more peace to more parts 
     of Iraq. I think that is a fact.

  Yet, since those comments, violence in Iraq has gone down even more, 
and the kind of political progress the authors of that New York Times 
piece were hoping for is finally taking place.
  A provincial powers law passed, with elections set to take place 
sometime before October. The Iraqi Parliament passed a partial amnesty 
law for prisoners--a sign of thawing relations between the Sunnis, who 
make up most of the prison population, and the majority Shias. The 
Iraqi Parliament has also approved a national budget that allocated 
Government revenue, most of it from oil, out to the provinces.
  To most people, the lesson of the last year is obvious: Coalition 
forces are winning this fight, and they deserve our full support and 
our thanks. The response from most of us has been a mix of pride and 
new confidence, especially now that some concrete political progress is 
being made. For others, however, the lesson to be drawn from success is 
the same as it was when we faced the strongest adversity: Cut the 
funds, withdraw the troops, and leave Iraq to the terrorists. 
Fortunately, most of the Senate will reject this view when we defeat 
the Feingold bills, hopefully for the last time.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I will use my leader time and ask unanimous 
consent that the vote not occur at 2:45.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, during the recess we had, I was in Nevada. 
People all across the State of Nevada, just like people all across this 
country, are committed to ending the war in Iraq.
  These are the facts. We need to end the worst foreign policy blunder 
in our Nation's history, which started with the invasion of Iraq. What 
has 5 years of war brought to America, to the Middle East, to the 
world? It has brought thousands of deaths, almost a trillion dollars in 
debt, catastrophic failure of diplomacy. What has 5 years of war 
brought to America, to the Middle East, and the world? Debt, 
depression, and death.
  My Republican colleagues, think what this war has done to our 
Nation's fiscal soundness. It has destroyed it. In less than a year 
borrowed money for Iraq will be $1 trillion--soon $1 trillion of 
borrowed money, with the likely Republican nominee for President saying 
we may need to be in Iraq for another 100 years. We are nearing the 
tragic milestone of 4,000 dead Americans, more than 30,000 wounded 
Americans, many gravely wounded, amputations, blindness, hearing loss, 
untold thousands with head trauma, making life after the war most 
difficult. This week brings news from the Pentagon that there will be 
140,000 American troops in Iraq still in July, 8,000 more than when the 
surge began in January of 2007.
  In Iraq a civil war rages, with the past 2 days bringing us the news 
of Sunni attacks on Shias while the Shias observe a religious holiday, 
attacks that killed at least threescore, wounded more than 100. And, of 
course, the Shias will reciprocate; and just in an off place that you 
have to search hard in the newspaper, three more dead American 
soldiers. These are the facts.
  In Israel we find the Bush administration has been too preoccupied to 
be concerned with the volatility of the Palestinian-Israeli situation. 
Now we have a raging civil war in the Palestinian territory, Hamas 
versus Fatah. A government can't be formed in Lebanon where some say is 
also a civil war. Iran is thumbing its nose at us and the world 
community. Torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, warrantless spying on 
American citizens--all as a result of this misplaced war. These are the 
facts.
  In an op-ed published in today's Washington Post, three noted writers 
and foreign policy experts said this:

       Republicans will claim that after four years of disastrous 
     mistakes, the Bush administration finally got it right with 
     its troop ``surge.'' Yet despite the loss of nearly 1,000 
     American lives and the expenditure of $150 billion, the surge 
     has failed in its stated purpose: providing the Iraqi 
     government with the breathing space to pass the 18 
     legislative benchmarks the Bush administration called vital 
     to political reconciliation.
       To date it has passed only four.


[[Page 2522]]


  And some say the four passed are for show; they have no substance.

       Moreover, as part of the surge, the administration has 
     further undermined Iraq's government by providing arms and 
     money to Sunni insurgent groups even though they have not 
     pledged loyalty to Baghdad.

  My high school pal, my buddy, I named one of my boys after him, he 
named one of his boys after me. I am proud of my namesake. He is a 
heroic helicopter pilot, having served a very difficult tour in 
Afghanistan and now Iraq. We exchanged regular e-mails during his time 
overseas. These e-mails were wonderful. Before going to Iraq, we had 
the opportunity to meet in Las Vegas for dinner. He was on his way. It 
was a nice dinner. He proudly told me of his war stories, stories of 
real-life valor. Now the e-mails have stopped. I had the good fortune 
of meeting my friend at my home in Searchlight last week, last Monday, 
a week ago yesterday.
  I said: Why don't I get e-mails anymore. His dad told me that his son 
said: They need to get us out of here. He wants to come home with the 
rest of our gallant, even heroic troops. These are the facts.
  The mission has not been accomplished. We have not been met as 
liberators. After 5 years of war, we are still an occupying force. 
Iraq, with untold wealth because of its oil supply, must take care of 
its own citizens. Americans need to start taking care of Americans. We 
cannot spend a half billion dollars every day in Iraq. These are the 
facts.
  We will soon vote on two amendments that will begin to change course 
in the bloody Iraq civil war. Our first vote is on a bill to 
responsibly begin to redeploy our troops so we can refocus on other 
threats and challenges around the world. Do we have them? General Casey 
testified today in a building a short distance from here that the Army 
is in a state of distress. We heard on the media this morning about 
what is going on in the Pacific. The admiral in charge there doesn't 
have the necessary force to do even intelligence. It has been shipped 
to Iraq.
  We need to begin to redeploy our troops. That is what this amendment 
is about. We can refocus on other threats and challenges, and there are 
many, and limit the troops to counterterrorism, force training, and 
protecting our assets.
  The other bill we will vote on later is also extremely important. It 
calls for a report from the administration on the status of the fight 
against al-Qaida, the fight against terrorism. As the war in Iraq 
rages, bin Laden remains free, and his terrorist network is gaining 
power worldwide. This legislation will shine the spotlight on this 
unmet challenge of fighting terrorism and keeping America safe--today, 
tomorrow, and beyond.
  I urge my colleagues to seek common ground toward a new American 
foreign policy that strengthens our security, supports our troops, and 
begins to restore our Nation's ability to once again lead in the way we 
have in generations past.


                             cloture motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order pursuant to rule 
XXII, the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 575, S. 2633, safe redeployment of 
     U.S. troops.
         Russell D. Feingold, Edward M. Kennedy, Patrick J. Leahy, 
           Robert Menendez, Ron Wyden, Sherrod Brown, Richard 
           Durbin, Bernard Sanders, Patty Murray, Frank R. 
           Lautenberg, Christopher J. Dodd, John D. Rockefeller 
           IV, Amy Klobuchar, Charles E. Schumer, Tom Harkin, 
           Barbara Boxer.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent the mandatory quorum call 
is waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to S. 2633, a bill to provide for the safe 
redeployment of United States troops in Iraq, shall be brought to a 
close.
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. 
Byrd), the Senator from New York (Mrs. Clinton), and the Senator from 
Illinois (Mr. Obama) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the 
Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) 
would have voted ``yea.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 70, nays 24, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 33 Leg.]

                                YEAS--70

     Akaka
     Alexander
     Allard
     Bennett
     Bond
     Boxer
     Brown
     Brownback
     Bunning
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Chambliss
     Coburn
     Cochran
     Coleman
     Collins
     Corker
     Craig
     Crapo
     DeMint
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Durbin
     Ensign
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Graham
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Isakson
     Kennedy
     Kerry
     Klobuchar
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Lugar
     Martinez
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Mikulski
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Reid
     Roberts
     Rockefeller
     Sanders
     Schumer
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stabenow
     Stevens
     Sununu
     Thune
     Vitter
     Voinovich
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden

                                NAYS--24

     Barrasso
     Baucus
     Bayh
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Carper
     Casey
     Conrad
     Dorgan
     Enzi
     Hagel
     Johnson
     Landrieu
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lincoln
     McCaskill
     Nelson (FL)
     Nelson (NE)
     Pryor
     Reed
     Salazar
     Tester
     Webb

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Byrd
     Clinton
     Cornyn
     McCain
     Obama
     Warner
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 70, the nays are 
24.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A motion to proceed to the bill (S. 2633) to provide for 
     the safe redeployment of United States troops from Iraq.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 
hours of postcloture debate prior to the motion to proceed being agreed 
to, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two 
leaders or their designees; further, that upon disposition of this 
legislation, S. 2633, the Senate then proceed to a cloture vote with 
respect to S. 2634.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I 
will object, we now have an opportunity to discuss the issue the 
majority feels we ought to be talking about. I have a number of 
speakers lined up on my side. I assume that is the case on the other 
side. So it is time to debate the Feingold proposal; therefore, I 
object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am satisfied that we got cloture on the 
motion to proceed to this important legislation, and I appreciate the 
bipartisan vote in this regard. Usually, however, when we get cloture 
on a motion to proceed, it means Senators are prepared to actually 
begin consideration of that legislation. However, I have asked consent 
that we do just that. My minority colleagues have objected.
  The only conclusion a reasonable person could have is that they are 
resorting to a new variation of the old theme. Remember, in 1 year--
last year--the Republican minority broke all rules in filibusters. In 1 
year, we had to file cloture 68 different times. So it is obvious this 
is only an effort to

[[Page 2523]]

stall, as they have done for the entire time we have been in the 
majority.
  Now, we are happy to legislate regarding Iraq, but it is obvious to 
me what the game plan is. They want us to slow the Senate down from 
getting things done. It is interesting to note that when the 30 hours 
is up, we will automatically go to cloture on the piece of legislation 
that calls for a reporting requirement on the global war on terror. 
From the statements made by the distinguished Republican leader, they 
don't like that. So it would seem to me it is very clear that they are 
going to do everything they can to stop us from getting to the housing 
legislation, which the American people badly need. I think it is 
important that we do the housing legislation and that we do consumer 
product safety. Of course, we are going to do the budget resolution. It 
is obvious the Republican minority is in their usual stalling tactic.
  Now, we have a few people who can speak, too, during these 30 hours, 
but what we should be doing is legislating on this most important 
legislation. Remember, the Iraq war is within a matter of days going to 
be starting the sixth year--the sixth year of this war. It has been 
reported that in less than a year, this war will cost the American 
taxpayer $1 trillion. Remember, Lindsey was fired because he said it 
would cost $100 billion. He was fired. Well, he was a little off.
  We know that in a matter of a few days we are going to have a 
milestone, a tragic milestone. There will be 4,000 dead Americans. Our 
troops have fought valiantly. We all acknowledge that. But as I 
indicated in my statement earlier today, they want to come home. 
Wherever you go, that is what they tell you. The parents tell you that. 
The troops tell you that. A Capitol policeman came home. He has been 
over there for almost a year. I talked to him yesterday: When are you 
going back?
  He said: In 2 weeks.
  How has it been, Jim?
  He said: It has been pretty tough.
  He is a different person than he was, having been through what he has 
been through.
  So if the Republicans want to talk about Iraq, we are happy to talk 
about Iraq and about how this money we have borrowed and continue to 
borrow--$1 trillion--is preventing us--I met with the Governors 
yesterday, the Democratic Governors. They know what they are not doing 
in their States because they have no money, whether it is 
infrastructure, the deterioration of roads, bridges, and dams or 
whether it is health care. They can't take care of some of the basic 
needs of the people from their States, and they know it is because of 
this war.
  The President doesn't like to borrow money, except for this war. 
There is a carte blanche: Borrow as much as you need. This war is 
costing us now about a half a billion dollars a day--a day. So isn't it 
good that the American people are hearing us talk about this?
  As I indicated in an earlier statement I made a few minutes ago, 
let's not start boasting about the surge. During the surge, we have 
lost about 1,000 American troops--1,000 American troops. We are glad 
the violence is down, but that is all a matter of degree. The Shia 
religious holiday they are trying to finish, in 2 days, more than 60 
killed, more than 100 wounded, and this is Sunni on Shia, and you can 
bet whatever you have to bet, the Shias will be back to inflict equal 
damage against the Sunnis, and the Sunnis, to whom we have paid huge 
amounts of money, have not even declared loyalty to the Baghdad 
Government.
  So we are happy to talk about Iraq. It is obvious the Republicans are 
doing everything they can to stop us from going forward on legislation, 
something dealing with the economy, of course. What would have been the 
right thing to do, if they were sincere about moving forward, a motion 
to proceed. I want everyone who is within the sound of my voice to 
understand that motions to proceed are routine. No one made us go 
forward on motions to proceed, until this Republican minority showed 
up, and then on virtually everything, they are doing the slow walk on 
everything--everything. If they were legitimate and genuine about what 
they want to do, we would be on this piece of legislation that has been 
introduced and we would be talking about the merits of it. But, no, 
that can't start.
  Understand that at the end of 30 hours, automatically we have a vote 
on the next cloture that has been filed because everything we do around 
here, we have to file cloture on a motion to proceed because of the big 
stalls taking place. So we are ready to talk as long as people want to 
talk on this issue. We have Democratic Senators who want to talk about 
this because they know what this war has done to what is taking place 
in our States, as indicated by the Governors whom I met with yesterday.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my good friend, the majority leader, 
seems to regret that we are having a debate on the matter he put in the 
queue for us to have a debate on. We would not be dealing with this 
issue this week but for his decision to file cloture on two motions to 
proceed on two Feingold bills. The first Feingold bill which is before 
us, we have actually essentially voted on four times already since the 
new majority took over in January of 2007. In fact, this will be the 
35th Iraq vote we have had since the new majority has taken over.
  We spent a lot of time discussing Iraq over the last year. During 
much of that time, the view of what was happening in Iraq was not 
nearly as positive or optimistic as it is now. Why we should have a 
truncated discussion of Iraq at a time when things are getting 
dramatically and measurably better strikes me as somewhat curious.
  So obviously the Iraq debate of the moment has commenced. I have a 
number of speakers on my side who wish to talk about the success of the 
surge, the improvement in Iraq, the improvement on the Government side 
as well as the military side. So we are happy to engage in this debate. 
It was not our decision to schedule it. This was the decision of the 
majority to devote whatever time was necessary this week to a 
discussion of these two Feingold bills related to Iraq.
  So we look forward to the discussion. I believe we have a number of 
people lined up who would be happy to engage in the Iraq discussion, 
and we will continue that until such time as there is a mutual 
agreement to yield back time, which may or may not occur, depending 
upon the situation and how many speakers we have. This is the way the 
Senate frequently operates. It is the way it was when our good friends 
on the other side were in the minority. There is nothing unusual about 
this at all. The one thing we know the majority leader can do is 
schedule, and it was his decision to schedule the two Feingold bills, 
and the first of which is now being talked about.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am happy to yield to my friend from 
Illinois in a minute.
  We are happy to debate the Iraq issue. We have always been happy to 
do it. Thirty-five times we have, and that is 35 times more than when 
the Republicans were in the majority. The war went on for years with no 
oversight, none whatsoever. We have at least demanded that, and I think 
it is important we have done that.
  I would also ask my Republican colleagues, why don't they ever talk 
about the costs of this war? The costs in life, bodily injury, and 
money--money that is keeping this country from taking care of its own?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 2633 offered by 
Senator Feingold.
  I think it is unfortunate the Republican leadership has once again 
put the Senate into a stall. It seems as if the Republicans feel that 
it takes them 30 hours to make up their mind to do anything. They want 
to burn off 30 hours of Senate time. I don't know why. What Senator 
Reid offered them was a chance to move to this resolution, to debate 
it, and if amendments are going to be offered, they would be offered. 
They turned it down. They want to

[[Page 2524]]

wait 30 hours before we even possibly reach that point. As Senator Reid 
explained it, there may be an intervening motion that slows us down 
there. But that is what this is all about. This is the Republicans' 
slow boat for America. They want to slow everything down to a snail's 
pace, and it is unfortunate that they do.
  They know what we want to do. We want to have a good, open debate on 
the policy on the war in Iraq, followed this week by emergency 
legislation to deal with the housing crisis in America. So their 
strategy is to avoid that debate on Iraq, a debate that leads to the 
actual bill, tie us up in procedural issues, and hope we don't get to 
the housing crisis by the end of the week. I guess at the end of the 
week the Republicans will say: Job well done. The Senate went home and 
didn't do anything for another week. Well, I guess that is what they 
think the minority is all about, to stop anything from happening. Isn't 
it unfortunate.
  If you listen to Presidential campaigning on both sides, Republicans 
and Democrats talking about change, they point an accusing finger at 
us, saying that time and again, Senators and Congressmen dream up ways 
to avoid facing the important issues in America. Well, it is time for 
us to face those issues in a timely way, to give ample opportunity to 
minority and majority, to debate, to amend, to move forward. Yet the 
Republicans, as they did last year, are doing everything this year 
again to obstruct, to stall, and to stop.
  Why is this important? The minority leader, Senator McConnell of 
Kentucky, was complaining that we have had 35 votes on the war in Iraq. 
He is war weary of voting on Iraq. Well, I want to say to him I am war 
weary as well. I am weary of 3,972 U.S. service men and women killed in 
Iraq. I am weary of 29,000 injured, many seriously, and with permanent 
conditions they will struggle with for a lifetime. I am weary of a war 
this President won't pay for, that costs us $10 billion to $15 billion 
a month. I am weary of the excuses we have made for the Iraqis who have 
failed to lead their own Nation while we risk and give American lives 
in this conflict. I am weary of the missed opportunities in America 
that $1 trillion spent on this war could have bought us to make our 
Nation stronger at home--better schools, making certain our teachers 
are compensated for good work, the technology we need so our children 
can be successful in this 21st century, medical research funds that 
have been cut under this administration, funds for extending health 
care and insurance for families across America, putting infrastructure 
in place in America so our economy can grow and move forward with good 
American jobs building those roads and highways and airports and mass 
transit. I am weary of that too.
  No apologies for the Senator from Kentucky for 35 votes on Iraq. That 
is hardly 1 vote for every 100 Americans who have been killed in that 
country. It certainly is worth our time to debate this. Even more 
important, it is worth our time to change this policy in Iraq.
  I salute Senator Feingold. He has been a lone voice. There were times 
I didn't agree with him. I thought he had an approach for this that we 
weren't ready for. But over time, I have come to understand his wisdom 
and his insight, and his political courage to bring this issue to the 
floor. If he didn't fight doggedly to make sure we didn't have this 
Iraq war debate, we would skate along perhaps month after month without 
ever facing the music. What we face is a reality.
  The Republican plan is to stall and wait 11 months until President 
George W. Bush, on January 20, 2009, can leave the White House, give a 
fond adieu to Washington, DC, and say: Well, I left the war; now it is 
up to the others to try to solve this. Well, it is going to take quite 
a bit to try to undo the worst foreign policy decision in modern memory 
in America.
  Many of us remember that night in October of 2002 when here in the 
Senate Chamber we voted on authorizing this President to go to war. I 
was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee then. I listened 
behind closed doors to classified and confidential information, and I 
couldn't put it together. I couldn't square with the information we 
received in the Intelligence Committee all of the dire predictions 
being made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, 
and Donald Rumsfeld. It didn't square away.
  Where in the world were the threats they were talking about--the 
weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear weapons, the connections with 
9/11? It turned out none of them existed--not one. We found no weapons 
of mass destruction. We found no nuclear weapons. We found no 
connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrible tragedy of 9/11. All 
of the pretenses and reasons given by this President to engage us in 
this war, to risk American lives, and to drag us on for more than 5 
years in this conflict turned out to be false; all of it.
  There is no greater deception in a democracy than for the leader to 
mislead the people of a nation into a war, to ask families to offer 
their children and their children's lives in service to this country 
for reasons that turn out not to be true. No weapons of mass 
destruction, no nuclear weapons, no connection with 9/11, and here we 
are, still bogged down, mired in this conflict.
  It is cold comfort to know that as we sent 20,000 or 30,000 more 
soldiers into Iraq last year that things got better. I am glad they 
did. I have been there since then. I am glad the surge brought some 
peace to some sections of Iraq. But that wasn't the reason for the 
surge. The surge was put in place so the Iraqis could finally take 
responsibility for their own country, so they could make hard political 
decisions and govern and lead and defend themselves. Here we are, 
almost a year later, and what do we have to show for it? An Iraqi 
Parliament that when we can get them to meet won't even face the 
serious issues. Time and again they fail to make the decisions they 
need to make so their Government can govern. Time and again we find 
excuses from them: They need a little more time. Every day they need is 
at the expense of American soldiers. Every month they take to finally 
reach a decision means that more body bags will come home to America 
and more wounded soldiers will return. So as they take their sweet time 
making their decisions, we are paying a heavy price as a Nation. And 
the complaint from the other side is we have had 35 votes on this; 
haven't we had enough? No, we haven't had enough until we change this 
policy, until we start bringing the troops home.
  You are going to hear a lot of things said about this Feingold 
resolution. I certainly hope that colleagues and Members will take the 
time to read it. Here is what it says: It says our future role in Iraq 
is going to be limited. We are not going to say to the military: Do 
whatever you like. We are going to say to our military in Iraq: Here is 
your role. This is what you can do. This is what we will provide funds 
for.
  First: Conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, 
against members of al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist organizations.
  That is certainly something we all agree on. Al-Qaida was behind 9/
11, not Saddam Hussein, and we should continue to target them. They 
have used Iraq as a land of opportunity now to go in and sow their 
seeds of division and hatred, to try to kill innocent people and to 
kill American soldiers. Senator Feingold says we will continue to fight 
to eliminate al-Qaida in Iraq.
  Second: Provide security for personnel and infrastructure of the U.S. 
Government.
  That should never be in question. We should make certain our Armed 
Forces are always there to protect our people and to protect important 
installations.
  Third: Provide training to members of the Iraqi security forces who 
have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the 
U.S. Armed Forces.
  If the Iraqis are ever going to take over defense of their own 
country so that we are not in Iraq for 50 years or 100 years or even 
1,000 years, as one of the Presidential candidates has said--if we are 
ever going to avoid that terrible outcome, the Iraqis have to stand and 
fight and defend their own country.

[[Page 2525]]

Senator Feingold says that is one of the legitimate reasons we can stay 
in Iraq. I agree with him.
  Fourth: To provide training, equipment, and other materials to 
members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their 
safety and security.
  No argument there.
  And finally: The resources to redeploy members of the U.S. Armed 
Forces from Iraq.
  What is missing from this? What is missing is any unilateral combat 
operation that opens a new part of this war. For 5 years we have given 
the Iraqi people all they could ever ask for. We deposed their 
dictator, we brought the best military in the world to their country, 
we gave them a chance to elect their own Government, write their own 
Constitution, and govern and defend themselves. What more could they 
ask for? We have paid for it mightily, with almost 4,000 lives, the 
hundreds of thousands who have served, and the thousands who have come 
home wounded, injured.
  I will tell you, for those who think we ought to look the other way 
for 11 months so President Bush can get out of town, they ought to go 
to these National Guard deployments and redeployments and look into the 
eyes of our guardsmen and their families, their tear-filled eyes as 
they send their soldiers off for yet another deployment.
  We have a young man here on the Capitol Police force who works with 
my office. He is about to face his second deployment with the Navy 
Reserve. He is taking it very well, with a smile, but he is going to be 
gone for 8 months--8 months away from his family, making less money 
serving with the Navy than he makes serving as a Capitol policeman--
taking a pay cut because the Federal Government is too cheap to provide 
what private corporations do for their activated employees--and he will 
be away from his family for another 8 months.
  Easy for us to say: Well, it is only 11 months. There will be a new 
President. Maybe there will be a change. But what about those soldiers 
and sailors and marines, airmen, all of our military who are called to 
serve? That 11 months will be a lifetime away from their families, and 
during that 11 months some of them will give their lives. That is why 
this debate is important and why it is timely and why I am glad Senator 
Feingold has brought it before us.
  It is unfortunate the Republican side wants to stall this debate, 
stall it for 30 hours in hopes we can drag everything out so we will 
never quite get to the issue here on Iraq and maybe never get to the 
issue of the housing crisis in America. That is the Grand Old Party's 
brandnew strategy: Stall, try to delay, find ways to make sure we don't 
get to the important issues. It is little wonder that the opinion of 
the American people of this Congress is low.
  What we should do is look to the positive side. If we change this 
policy in Iraq, if we tell the President on a bipartisan basis that we 
have had enough of this, that we want to see a change in mission, we 
have a chance to change this country. We can take the resources that 
would have been spent in Iraq and spend them in America. We can make 
sure we are providing health care, job training, and building schools, 
roads and bridges. We can create an economic stimulus in the United 
States instead of an economic stimulus in Iraq. I think a strong 
America begins at home. Wouldn't it be great if we invested our 
precious tax revenues in that belief?
  Let me tell you what the National Intelligence Estimate said about 
the state of this war in Iraq. Last year, they gravely noted that:

       The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for 
     jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in 
     the Muslim world, and cultivating supporters for the global 
     jihadist movement.

  That is a quote from the National Intelligence Estimate. What it says 
is that as we battle on in Iraq and lose American lives and spend 
American dollars, we are creating a magnet for the extremists around 
the world to come and kill our troops and to be inspired in their own 
sad and devilish ways to kill other innocent people around the world. 
Did anyone bargain for that when we invaded Iraq? Did anyone think it 
would make the war on terror more difficult to win? That is what the 
National Intelligence Estimate tells us.
  This administration has recklessly diverted critical military 
intelligence and civilian assets from Afghanistan in the process. That 
was a war I voted for, without reservation--a unanimous vote in the 
Senate, just days after the attack on 9/11. We knew where that attack 
came from. It didn't come from Saddam Hussein and Iraq, it came from 
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and the al-Qaida forces that were 
running rampant through Afghanistan. Well, the situation in Afghanistan 
has deteriorated because we have spent so much on human life and 
American dollars on Iraq. That is the reality of this administration's 
priorities.
  The Taliban and al-Qaida, sadly, are regrouping in Afghanistan, and 
we know for sure Pakistan, the neighboring country, is increasingly 
unstable. In fact, the strongest military on Earth is apparently so 
overstretched at this moment, the administration can't even find a 
handful of transport helicopters to help the desperately needed people 
of Darfur with the U.N. peacekeeping force.
  How long will we stand by this failed foreign policy, this disaster 
in Iraq, at such a high cost in human lives, dollars, reputation, and 
national security? We are hearing once again that we are seeing 
progress in Iraq. How many times have we heard this story? At least for 
5 years--from the beginning, from Vice President Cheney's rosy scenario 
of the troops being greeted with parades and arms laden with flowers to 
welcome them to Iraq, something that unfortunately did not occur--until 
the present time, when the so-called surge has turned everything 
around. And yet 150,000 American lives are still at risk this morning, 
this afternoon, and this evening in Iraq.
  The entire point of the surge was to carve out political space for 
the Iraqi political leadership. They haven't used the time; they 
haven't used the surge for that to happen. Does anyone honestly believe 
we are closer to the day that the Iraqis will take responsibility for 
their own future? They will if this passes, because they will know our 
days are numbered in Iraq. We are not going to be there for 25, 50, or 
1,000 years. That is not fair to our soldiers; it is not fair to 
America.
  This administration has no strategy beyond ``stay the course'' until 
January 20, 2009. We in Congress have a responsibility to change 
direction. Our responsibility is for those soldiers and their families, 
it is for those guardsmen and their families, it is for everyone 
risking their life today in Iraq. They need to come home. And when they 
come home, we know that we have our hands full.
  They come home with serious problems. The suicide rate among soldiers 
is at a record high. It is even higher among Guardsmen who are 
activated to serve. Post-traumatic stress disorders of years gone by 
intensify in the returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
  We know those who suffered serious injuries--amputations, traumatic 
brain injury--are going to need our help for a long time to come. This 
administration has shortchanged the Veterans' Administration. When we 
begged them to put in the billions of dollars necessary to keep our 
promise to these veterans and those from other wars, they said they did 
not need it. Then, of course, they were proven wrong.
  We continued to put billions of dollars into the Veterans' 
Administration, and we should and we will for the future, trying to pay 
the long-term costs of this war, a heavy cost that future generations 
will carry. And those on the other side say: Well, let's just let this 
go for another 11 months. Let's see how this all works out, another 11 
months of returning veterans, returning wounded, another 11 months of 
more responsibility to future generations.
  Staying with the failed strategy is no strategy at all. Changing 
course in Iraq is long overdue. Quite simply, we cannot give this 
administration another

[[Page 2526]]

blank check because we know what they are going to do with it. They are 
going to continue this policy as we see more and more American soldiers 
in harm's way. The bill before us is reasonable, it is measured, it is 
a thoughtful effort to put before this administration a new approach, a 
new policy, and a new direction in Iraq.
  Starting to redeploy the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 
days is a reasonable thing to do. Certainly, many of them will stay 
there for those specified responsibilities, but as they start to leave, 
the Iraqis may wake up to the reality that it is their country and 
their responsibility. The question is no longer whether the surge, or 
more accurately a significant escalation of troops, has worked. The 
question is how we can return our focus to the original al-Qaida 
threat.
  Sad to say, 6 years, more than 6 years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is 
still on the loose. He is still guiding in his way the al-Qaida forces 
that threaten us in the rest of the world. We need to help countries 
such as Jordan that have been overrun with Iraqi refugees. We certainly 
have to understand that a country that has been that friendly to the 
United States deserves a helping hand, and we have to start to rebuild 
our international image and reputation.
  It is unfortunate to hear people around the world, once our friends, 
once our allies, once our supporters, so critical of the United States 
because of the colossal mistake made by the Bush administration with 
this invasion of Iraq. We have to turn that page, and we cannot wait 
until January 20, 2009, to do it.
  Last year, a New York Times-CBS News poll showed that only 5 percent 
of Americans trust this President to successfully resolve the Iraq war; 
1 out of 20 Americans trust President Bush to resolve this war. Well, I 
do not believe he will either. I would be with the 95 percent. But 
Congress has an equally important responsibility to oversee this war as 
it is fought, to do everything we can to protect our troops and to 
resolve this war so our troops can come home to the heroes, welcome 
they richly deserve. We need to step into the leadership void that this 
White House has left and change directions for our policy in Iraq.
  I am going to support this bill to bring an end to this war. I was 1 
of 23 who voted against it. Of all of the votes that I have ever cast 
in this Congress in the House and Senate, I look back with the greatest 
assurance that was the right vote, the right vote for America. I do not 
think anything that has transpired since that late October night in 
2002 has ever made me waiver in my belief that it was a serious mistake 
for the United States to give to this President and this administration 
the authority to begin this war, which has cost us so much over the 
years.
  I believe we have to be careful in our foreign policy. Of course, 
defend America, that is our first responsibility. But never engage in a 
war when we cannot understand the consequences that might follow, like 
this war. It is so much easier to get in a war than it is to get out of 
one.
  Senator Feingold is engaging this Senate in a debate that is long 
overdue for a change in policy that is long overdue. The Republicans 
are going to stall, try to avoid the vote, try to speechify us to 
death, not going to face this vote or a vote on the housing crisis. But 
that is nothing new. As the majority leader, Senator Reid has said, 
last year 68 times they initiated a filibuster. That is a brandnew 
record in the Senate. Before that it was 61 filibusters in 2 years. 
That was the record. Well, they managed 68 in 1 year.
  It shows you what they are up to. They just want to grind us down, 
slow us down, and make us avoid the issues that count in America. One 
of those issues is ending this war the right way, and another which 
will follow is the housing crisis which plagues our economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am a little confused. About an hour and a 
half ago the majority leader brought up a bill. He and the Senator from 
Wisconsin had filed this bill to leave Iraq in 120 days. And he filed 
cloture on that to see whether enough Senators would agree to debate 
the bill. So that we can start to debate it, it took 60 Senators to 
vote yes. The majority leader must have been surprised when we voted 
yes because he does not seem to want to take yes for an answer.
  He filed the bill, wanted to debate it, and presumably have a vote on 
it. But when we agreed to debate it, he called foul and said: You are 
trying to stall because you did not vote no so that we can move on to 
the next bill and then the next bill which will be the economic 
stimulus package.
  So I am confused. Maybe I should not be because almost half of the 
members of the majority voting voted against cloture; that is to say, 
they voted against proceeding to the bill that the majority leader had 
filed. Now, ordinarily members of the majority do not vote against 
these cloture motions that the majority leader files to take up a bill. 
Ordinarily, all of the members of the party vote with their leader on 
these votes.
  I gather that the majority leader must have thought that the bill 
would not get cloture; that is to say, that we would not start the 
debate. Then I suppose Republicans would be accused of trying to stall, 
of not being willing to vote on the bill that he and the Senator from 
Wisconsin had filed, maybe putting Republicans into a no-win situation, 
damned if we do and damned if we do not.
  If we agree with the majority leader and take up his bill to debate 
it, we are stalling. And if we do not agree, then I suspect we would 
have been accused of not being willing to debate Iraq and not being 
willing to vote on the amendments or the bill that he and the Senator 
from Wisconsin filed.
  So as I say, I am confused. All Republicans did was to say: OK, you 
wanted to debate the bill that you filed. We will agree to proceed with 
that. Now the distinguished minority whip just said Republicans are 
speechifying this to death. Well, Republicans have spoken about 5 
minutes out of the last hour. All of the rest of the time has been 
taken by members of the majority party. The majority whip himself 
spoke, I think, a little over half an hour. I do not intend to take 
that long.
  But I think it is hard to accuse Republicans of speechifying the bill 
to death when all we did was, an hour and a half ago, agree to debate, 
and the minority leader has spoken a total of about 5 minutes. Do you 
want a debate on Iraq or not? Now that the surge is working, it appears 
maybe that members of the majority party are not so anxious to have 
that debate.
  But as Minority Leader McConnell pointed out, Republicans are willing 
to have that debate. A group of Republicans were just in Iraq over the 
course of the last week. Several of us have been there since the first 
of the year and have a very positive story to report about the work 
that our troops are doing there and the effect of their efforts.
  There is a positive report that the American people deserve to hear. 
So I think you will see Republicans agreeing to debate the resolution. 
For my purpose, I am perfectly happy to vote on it. But under the rule 
that the majority leader has taken advantage of, as soon as we have had 
30 hours to debate this, then automatically we go to the next Feingold-
Reid bill.
  That is a bill that does not have us get out of Iraq, but rather says 
we should try to develop a strategy to deal with al-Qaida. Well, of 
course, the administration's first strategy, as we have discussed on 
this floor many times, the first, best way to deal with terrorists is 
to get good intelligence on them to know what they are up to. Maybe we 
could have prevented 9/11 had we had better intelligence. And so the 
FISA--this is the law that allows us to listen in on the communications 
of these terrorists--that bill, that law expired.
  The President said: We are losing good intelligence. You need to act 
to reauthorize that law.
  The Senate did. I think we had 68 votes, a bipartisan vote. We acted 
in a bipartisan way to support that. Many of our colleagues, I think it 
was 28 or

[[Page 2527]]

29, voted to oppose that. Now the leadership of the House of 
Representatives has said: Well, let it expire. And they went on the 
break 12 days ago without having acted to reauthorize the so-called 
FISA law.
  That law needs to be reauthorized. Each day that passes that it is 
not reauthorized, we are losing intelligence. Now, what happens if 
there is another 9/11 and we later find out that one of the reasons is 
because for a period of several weeks we could not listen in to what 
those terrorists were saying? We are missing intelligence.
  Frankly, we ought not to do anything else around here until we get 
that law reauthorized and the President can sign it into law. But the 
majority leader said: First, we are going to have a debate on the 
Feingold-Reid bill to get out of Iraq in 120 days. Then we need to have 
a debate on developing a new strategy for dealing with al-Qaida.
  Okay. Republicans are happy to engage in that debate, as I said. But 
to be accused by the majority of trying to stall by simply agreeing to 
the debate that the majority requested, is not correct.
  Moreover, nobody is trying to stall consideration of a housing bill 
or an economic stimulus package. We understand that the majority is 
going to be bringing such a package to the floor. We have not seen it. 
We do not know what is in it. We are certainly not stalling it. It is 
not here yet. The majority leader could have brought that to the floor. 
He could have told us what is in it. He could have filed cloture on it 
so that we had the vote on whether we are going to take it up, but 
instead he brought up the first Iraq resolution. Then that is going to 
be automatically followed by a second resolution dealing with al-Qaida. 
Then, only after that, apparently, do we get to the economic stimulus 
or housing package.
  So it is not Republicans who are holding it up. We have not done 
anything to hold it up. We have not even seen it yet.
  So I think this criticism of Republicans for stalling simply because 
we agreed with the majority leader to take up his bill and debate it is 
not accurate, and it is not fair to Republicans.
  Now what about the surge and this Iraq resolution? I think it is 
interesting that the first criticism was that we had a failed policy in 
Iraq. So when General Petraeus developed a new policy, the surge 
policy, which began to work, the debate suddenly began to shift. Now 
that it is very clear the surge has worked it is shifting even more. It 
is shifting now to, well, OK, maybe the surge is working, but the Iraqi 
Government needs to do more.
  Well, the Iraqi Government is now doing a lot more, too, as we will 
hear. But I suspect nothing is going to be good enough for those who 
want to get out of Iraq now because, as the majority whip has pointed 
out, we really need to improve America's image abroad. And there a lot 
of people who disagree with us, so that is one of the reasons we need 
to get out of Iraq.
  But he also said--how many times--that we are doing better in Iraq. 
Well, I do not know how many times, but certainly since General 
Petraeus reported to the Congress, and every week thereafter, there has 
been improvement. And all we have to do is listen to our colleagues who 
have been there recently to see this reported progress in Iraq.
  I do not know why people are so afraid of good news when you are 
winning in a war. Why is that not a good thing? Why are you not proud 
of that? Why do you not say: That is great; let's finish the job.
  I suspect if you ask the majority of our troops: Now that you have 
got your boot right on the neck of these enemy terrorists, do you think 
we ought to let it up and walk away or do you think we ought to finish 
the job? My guess is they would all say: Let's finish the job or you 
all back in Washington let us finish the job. Do not pull the plug on 
us so that we have to leave Iraq before we finish the job.
  It is interesting there is now a new argument: OK, maybe the surge is 
working. Maybe the Iraqi Government is going to be taking the action we 
asked them to do. And, in fact, they have. They are now taking action 
on the so-called reconciliation there on local elections and the like.
  But now the argument is, well, we could actually spend this money on 
other things. Of course, you can always spend money on other things. 
When you are in a war, however, it is a little different. You cannot 
just pull the plug and say we would rather spend the money on housing 
or transportation or education than we would on the war. You do not 
have that option. You cannot just pick up stakes and leave because you 
have to consider the cost of what you leave behind.
  Most of the experts who have talked about this have made it crystal 
clear if we decide we want to leave because we would rather spend the 
money on something else, the ultimate cost would be far greater than if 
we finished the job. Because by most estimates, the situation would 
deteriorate. Al-Qaida would reinfiltrate, and the other enemies of the 
Iraqi people would create more problems. The next thing you know, we 
would have to come back in and try to clean up the mess that was 
created because we left prematurely. The bottom line is, the cost of 
leaving prematurely would be far greater than the cost of finishing the 
job once and for all. It is also difficult to put a price on our 
national security, especially because of those young men and women who 
have given the ultimate sacrifice. We owe it to them to ensure that 
what they have done, the sacrifice they have made, is not going to be 
wasted, is not going to be lost because we were too anxious to get out 
of there to spend money on something else. That is not good policy. It 
is not the way to win a war. It is certainly not the way to beat the 
terrorists.
  The final point the majority whip made was we should return to the 
original al-Qaida threat. I get back to the point I made before. If you 
want to return to the original al-Qaida threat, there is no better way 
than, A, to finish the job in Iraq where we have al-Qaida on the run--
they are essentially defeated; let's don't let them rise back up 
again--and B, pass the FISA legislation, the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act, which allows us to collect intelligence on these 
terrorists abroad. Again, we did that in the Senate, though many on the 
other side--28--voted against it.
  The House of Representatives leadership has an obligation to try to 
get this done. Therefore, I call upon the Democratic House leadership 
to bring up the bill the Senate passed and see if it will pass the 
House of Representatives. I suspect the reason it has not been brought 
up is because they know it would pass. That is a bill the President 
would sign. Why wouldn't that be a good thing? That is the appropriate 
way to move forward.
  Let me try to summarize. Republicans have put us into a stall, our 
Democratic friends say, because we agreed to debate the bill they 
wanted us to debate. They expected us to say no, that we wouldn't 
debate it. Then we would have been accused of trying to avoid debate. 
But we agreed. We will have the debate. It is only 30 hours. That is 
hardly enough time for all of my colleagues to be able to say the 
things they want to say, if we have half of that time, but nonetheless 
we will try to give the report of the truth of what is happening in 
Iraq. The American people will be better off for that. So I am glad we 
agreed with the majority leader to proceed to the debate on this bill. 
I suspect we will want to do the same thing on the next bill.
  If and when the Democratic majority puts together an economic 
stimulus package, then we can take a look at that and see whether we 
want to debate that as well. But, again, our first priority ought to be 
to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed because every 
day that goes by that that law is not in effect, we jeopardize our 
national security. We jeopardize our ability to collect intelligence on 
al-Qaida and other terrorists, and we put the lives of Americans at 
risk. That is unacceptable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). The Senator from New Jersey.

[[Page 2528]]


  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, how much time do I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Each Senator may speak up to 1 hour.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I came to the floor to speak in 
support of the Feingold amendment. I came purposely to talk about that 
issue, but I am compelled, having heard some of the remarks made by 
some of our colleagues, to first preface my remarks as it relates to 
this debate.
  Yes, we are happy to have a debate, but it doesn't take 30 hours to 
come to the same conclusion the American people have clearly come to in 
this country: that continual engagement in the war in Iraq and the 
course we are on is not in the national interests of the United States. 
They have come through the common sense Americans always show. This is 
overwhelmingly the conclusion of a great majority of Americans. They 
understand. It doesn't take us 30 hours to do that. We can have an 
open, honest, and intelligent debate with a few Members on each side 
making the case for their respective points of view, but we don't have 
to take 30 hours in order to get to that goal so that we can move to 
the other important business of the Senate.
  This is important business. It deserves a thorough debate. But, by 
the same token, it is clear that the whole process of objecting to the 
majority leader's effort to limit the scope of time so that we can have 
a robust debate but then go on to the other business before the Senate 
is to extend the time, is to delay us.
  We have seen through a record number of filibusters the Republican 
minority has used in this Chamber in a way that defies all historic 
proportions. It is clear that what was intended to be used as a rare 
occasion to protect the rights of the minority, particularly on 
exceptional critical issues of the time, has now been abused in such a 
way in which it is intended to stall the work of the Senate but, more 
importantly, the work of the American people. That is the framework in 
which we start this debate. We can have a robust debate, but we don't 
need 30 hours to accomplish it.
  Secondly, I cannot understand how some Members can come to the floor 
of the Senate and rail against the fact that the foreign intelligence 
surveillance bill has not been passed by the House of Representatives 
when they refused to agree to a 21-day extension of the existing law 
that gives the administration everything they want to do. So if this is 
such a critical issue, as has been described by Members of the 
Republican side of the aisle, why would they not have agreed to 
continue while the Congress debated the opportunity to extend the law 
that allows you to do all those things you say are critical to the 
protection of the American people?
  I can only come to the conclusion that either it is not as critical 
as they define, because fear is what we sell, it seems, on the 
Republican side--we have been hearing fear for quite some time; the 
American people have caught up to that--or, in fact, they simply want 
to have the proposition for a political purpose. If not, we would have 
had the 21-day extension. Everything the administration claims they 
needed, they would have had, and therefore we would have been able to 
move forward. Those two items need to be put in context.
  Let me get to the main purpose of what I came to the floor to speak 
about, and that is in support of the Feingold amendment.
  The Senate has an opportunity, once again, to vote to transition our 
troops out of Iraq with honor and refocus our efforts on defeating al-
Qaida. It is long past time for us to make that decision. The 
administration has never told us the truth about the war in Iraq. Some 
people want to gloss over that. But if what is past is prologue, then 
we need to be worried about what we constantly hear.
  The budget they submitted to Congress is the latest proof of that. 
The budget is terrible in a lot of ways. It leaves millions of children 
without full access to health care. It fails to wean us off our 
addiction to foreign oil. It fails to adequately address climate 
change. It fails to repair our education system or shrink the 
ballooning deficit. Basically, it fails to make a serious effort to 
tackle the most pressing problems average Americans face in their lives 
each and every day.
  Beyond that, the budget is dishonest about the cost of one of the 
most expensive wars in our history, a war that has lasted more than 
America's engagement in World War II. It lists the cost of the war in 
Iraq for next year at $70 billion. All the other calculations in the 
budget, including the debt and the deficit, in some way assume that $70 
billion is all the war is going to cost in the next fiscal year. We 
have to wonder if whoever wrote the section of the budget on Iraq found 
their job after leaving their old post at the accounting department of 
Enron because it is clearly the same type of accounting.
  Recently, the Secretary of Defense took a baby step toward honesty 
and estimated the true cost for next year at another $170 billion of 
America's money. He said that was just a rough estimate, because when 
you have already spent more than a half trillion dollars, I guess you 
just round up to the nearest hundred billion. This is from an 
administration that over 5 years of a historical engagement in Iraq 
knows how many troops we have, knows the projection moving forward, and 
therefore knows what the consequences in terms of cost are. To send a 
budget to the Congress that everyone knows in the context of the cost 
in Iraq is a farce, this type of carelessness--if one can call it 
carelessness--in accounting is offensive to the American people who are 
funding the war.
  This administration is so dead set on staying in Iraq. I know some 
Presidential candidates have suggested that we will do so for 100 
years, if necessary. They just don't seem to care how much tax money 
they spend. They don't seem to care how much money they have to borrow 
from the Chinese to pay the bills, because we don't pay for this in 
terms of how we are going to afford the war. We don't domestically 
decide, well, this is going to be offset by some either revenue stream 
or cuts in programs. No, under this administration, we just keep adding 
it to the next generation--more debt, more debt. They don't seem to 
care how much wind gets knocked out of our economy because the money 
could have gone to creating jobs, stimulating the production of green 
energy, or helping families make ends meet.
  As a matter of fact, we could use that money to do something that is 
critically important as well--protect America here on domestic soil. 
Because as we look at the President's budget, what does it do? It 
eliminates COPS funding that put 100,000 police officers on the streets 
of the cities. It cuts homeland security grants to States by 70 
percent. It cuts port security by half. It cuts infrastructure security 
by half. This at a time in which every report, including those of the 
administration, has al-Qaida reconstituted on the Pakistan-Afghanistan 
border, and reports are coming out that they have been reconstituted 
with the strength and the ability to perform another attack on the 
United States.
  The terrorists have to only get lucky once. We have to be right 100 
percent of the time. How can you achieve those goals when you eliminate 
the very essence of the funding for those who, as we learned on 
September 11, came to respond on that fateful day? It wasn't the 
Federal Government, it was local police and firefighters and emergency 
management and hospital personnel. That is who came. What does this 
budget do? It slashes the living daylights out of those very first 
responders who are critical to our domestic security.
  What does it do about one of the gaping wounds we have in the country 
in terms of security? It slashes port security. Everybody who comes to 
the Capitol has to go through a security device, 100 percent. Everybody 
who goes to the White House has to go through a security device, 100 
percent. But when we talk about cargo coming from all over the world, 
only 5 percent has to go through the scanning process. Yet we are going 
to cut port security by 50 percent.
  Mass transit: The Congress spoke in the last session and put mass 
transit up there, understanding we saw what happened in Madrid and 
Mumbai and

[[Page 2529]]

other places in the world. Yet the President cuts mass transit security 
by 56 percent.
  So to those who argue we cannot talk about the consequences of our 
engagement in Iraq in a financial context here at home, well, in the 
context of security here at home, at a time of a regrouping and 
restrengthening of al-Qaida on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, with 
the ability to ultimately commit terrorism domestically in the United 
States, yes, there is a real causal connection and a real consequence 
and we have to include that as part of the debate and part of the 
consequences in our continuing engagement in Iraq in an open-ended way.
  Now, with what we heard the Secretary of Defense talk about with the 
amount of money the Secretary of Defense thinks we might spend in Iraq 
next year, in a different context we could have more than doubled our 
package to stimulate the economy this year. When Americans get rebate 
checks in a month or so, they should imagine them more than twice as 
big because that is what this year in Iraq would cost.
  If we want to imagine the total financial cost of the war in Iraq 
over almost 5 years, if we want to imagine what $608 billion means, we 
could divide that up and send every American a check for $2,000.
  If we want to know what the war will cost over the next decade if we 
continue the course we are on, that is about $2.8 trillion. Every 
American should picture a check for more than $9,000. That is what the 
war costs: more than $9,000 for every man, woman, and child living in 
the United States of America. If there are four people in your family, 
that is $36,000 that potentially could have been put in your family's 
economy.
  When so many hard-working families are struggling to keep their 
homes, and so many are struggling to help keep up with the rising cost 
of health care and college tuition and heating oil, when so many have 
to care for aging parents, put food on the table, and struggle to make 
ends meet each month, $36,000 would go a long way. So it is a different 
way of looking at it.
  There are many different ways of looking at the costs of the war. So 
here is how it all adds up. We cannot think about economic stimulus 
without thinking about how we can stimulate peace. We cannot heal our 
economy without closing the financial hemorrhage that is the war in 
Iraq. It seems to me that in addition to those financial contexts, 
there is the whole question of security--the security I talked about in 
a domestic capacity; the security challenges we have by overextending 
our troops in such a way in which all of our military leadership speaks 
about the challenges we would have if we had to meet another security 
challenge in the world; and basically an understanding that, God 
forbid, we had another security challenge, while we are still engaged 
in Iraq in the way in which we are engaged, while we have a resurgence 
in Afghanistan of the Taliban, with some of the latest reports talking 
about some very fierce fighting and the lack of response by NATO and a 
pumping up of our troops there; and looking at that scenario and now 
looking at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where al-Qaida has 
reconstituted. And that is, God forbid, if anything else happens in the 
world.
  That is our challenge, in a security context, if we continue the 
course: a challenge that those who have the military prowess tell us we 
cannot meet if we continue in this way.
  For 5 years, the administration has parroted the line that: ``We're 
fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here.'' But now 
more than ever we realize that one of the biggest impacts of the war 
has been we are spending our money over there and, therefore, we cannot 
spend it here--money that includes billions of dollars that have been 
misspent, including hundreds of millions of dollars in reconstruction 
projects that are unaccounted for.
  I came back from Iraq about a month ago. I must say, when I see 
schools going wanting here in America, when I see hospitals closing in 
my home State, when I see roads that have deteriorated, bridges that 
have fallen, and see reconstruction in Iraq but no construction here at 
home, those are real consequences of the war.
  When I see us talk about the genocide in Darfur, and we are 
universally committed to the proposition ``never again,'' ``never 
again,'' what does ``never again'' mean? That we will not repeat the 
legacies of the past, the failures of the past: in the Holocaust, in 
Rwanda, in the Armenian Genocide. No, no, we will act. Yet because of 
our present security challenges, and the consequences of being engaged 
in Iraq in the way we are, we stand by and watch people in Darfur be 
slaughtered. So much for ``never again.''
  Not long ago, about a month ago, I had the chance to make a trip to 
Iraq myself. First and foremost, the trip proved something I believed 
for a long time: We should be incredibly proud of the men and women who 
wear the uniform of the United States and who are serving there. They 
do not ask whether this is the right or wrong mission. They just serve 
with honor and integrity, and they risk their lives every day.
  I came away extremely impressed with their commitment, and I felt 
honored to be able to share some time with them, including many from my 
home State of New Jersey who are serving there. So we need to give them 
a mission worthy of their sacrifice. I believe that is what Senator 
Feingold's amendment does.
  Beyond that, one other thing became very clear to me. The solutions 
to Iraq's problems lie in the hands of the Iraqis. We cannot achieve 
peace, we cannot achieve reconciliation, we cannot achieve power 
sharing, we cannot get Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to sit side by side at the 
point of a military gun.
  As long as we continue to, in essence, be enablers of an Iraqi 
leadership that has become so dependent on the United States and 
refuses to meet the challenges of the hard choices, compromises, and 
negotiations necessary for their Government to ultimately achieve, they 
will never, ever feel the urgency of now.
  When the President sent 30,000 additional troops into harm's way in 
Iraq last year, the purpose--his purpose, his stated purpose; not my 
view of it, his stated purpose--his stated purpose was to allow Iraqis 
to have the opportunity and the space, the environment, to strengthen 
the Federal Government and achieve national reconciliation.
  That, no matter how we try to paint it, has not been accomplished. 
Even our own benchmarks, that even the administration agreed to and the 
Iraqis agreed to, have largely not been accomplished. So to use a 
sports analogy, we keep changing the goalposts every time, further and 
further away from the obligations the Iraqi leadership has.
  Not too long ago, Iraq's Parliament finally passed three laws, after 
months of bitter squabbling. We certainly should applaud them for that. 
But the Bush administration is touting this event as an end-all, be-all 
political breakthrough. But, as usual, they are taking a small bit of 
good news and trying to whitewash the bigger picture.
  The agreement the Iraqi Parliament reached is basically temporary. 
The provincial powers arrangement is set to expire--guess what--in 1 
year--what they passed has an expiration in 1 year--to hold the 
politicians over so they can have the same arguments all over again 
next year.
  Iraqi politicians are still a long way from permanent agreements over 
fundamental issues because they do not have the pressures of the 
necessity to do so. The reason is, as long as we continue to insist in 
an open-ended presence in the lives of Americans and the national 
treasure of the United States, they will not make the hard choices and 
compromises necessary to achieve lasting stability.
  When I went to Iraq and met with a lot of the Iraqi elected 
leadership and some of the tribal chiefs and whatnot, I was stunned 
that they kept telling me about what America needed to do. My response 
to them was: Iraq's future is in your hands, not in America's hands. 
You must make these decisions for your country.

[[Page 2530]]

  I know we have heard a lot about the surge, and certainly it depends 
on what your measurement is. If you are talking about greater security 
in Baghdad, the answer is, yes, yes; no question--although Baghdad has 
become far more segregated as a city, so that one of the ways in which 
security has been achieved is that we segregate Sunnis and Shias into 
different parts of Baghdad's neighborhood. Maybe that is the cost.
  But when I landed, I was supposed to go to Mosul. I was not able to 
go to Mosul because they could not guarantee my protection. We have 
millions of displaced Iraqis who are beginning to come back. And now 
they come back to neighborhoods and to homes where the person living 
there is--not only has their home been taken over, but they are not 
even from their same sect. So they feel they cannot go live there.
  I asked: How are you ready to take on the displacement of several 
million of your country people coming back to the country? They have no 
real plan. We have 80,000 or so concerned local citizens, individuals 
who at one time fought us and have decided to join us but who are on 
the payroll--we pay them every week to be there--and their expectation 
is they are going to be integrated either into the security forces or 
get some type of employment. We do not have from the Iraqis a clear 
sense of how they are going to meet that challenge. These are 80,000 
individuals who have weapons on them.
  So when we hear about the surge, let's not forget what President Bush 
said was the purpose. It was to create the space and environment 
necessary for the opportunity for Iraqi leadership to make the hard 
choices, compromises, and negotiations, to pass the benchmarks we had 
passed and the Iraqis agreed to. That has failed. That has failed.
  About security: Yes, we have created greater security in Baghdad. We 
also have created greater segregation in Baghdad. And we have pushed 
the challenges elsewhere in the country.
  At Combat Post X-Ray outside of Baghdad, I met with troops from New 
Jersey serving in the Air Force. An IED had just killed one of their 
colleagues and wounded several others.
  The hardest thing I have had to do in 33 years of public life is to 
call a family and give them my condolences because a loved one has been 
killed. It is the hardest thing I have had to do in public life. It is 
hard enough for a parent or a wife or a husband or a mother or a father 
to hear that when they believe their family member was fighting for 
freedom and for our security. It is incomprehensible when that death 
was about Iraqi politicians fighting for resources and power.
  When General Petraeus was here last year and came before the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, he said in his testimony that what we have 
in Iraq going on is a fight over power and resources.
  I do not think Americans believe that sending their sons and 
daughters into harm's way so Iraqis can fight over power and resources 
is a mission worthy of their sacrifice. There is no military solution 
in Iraq. Everyone, including General Petraeus, has admitted that.
  The only way to pressure Iraqi politicians into making the choices 
necessary to move their country forward is to stop signing blank checks 
and to set a timetable to transition our troops back home. That is, in 
essence, what my colleague, Senator Feingold, does. He creates a 
transition, effective 120 days after this law is passed and signed by 
the President. But that still permits us to meet critical missions, to 
conduct targeted operations against members of al-Qaida, the real 
threat to the United States, and affiliated international terrorist 
organizations; to provide the security for our own personnel and the 
infrastructure of the U.S. Government; to provide training to members 
of the Iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian 
violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces so that we can ensure 
that they can ultimately be able to stand up for their own country as 
our major focus; and to provide training, equipment, or other materiel 
to members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve 
their safety and security while redeploying members of the U.S. Armed 
Forces.
  That, in my mind, is ultimately an opportunity to transition with 
honor; focus our mission on whom we need to--al-Qaida; strengthen the 
Iraqi security forces to meet their own challenge; and send a message 
to the Iraqi leadership that you must do what you have failed to do. 
The opportunity has been given to you. We cannot continue an open check 
in terms of national treasure or a continuing loss of American lives.
  Finally, I felt truly blessed to step onto American soil after flying 
back from Iraq. Too many American men and women over there do not have 
the option right now of taking that return flight, and too many 
Americans have not returned, and others may not as well. I have seen 
firsthand how bravely our troops have served, but let's be clear about 
that service: American troops cannot be waiting for Iraqis forever to 
make the choices necessary to achieve success in their country. They 
cannot be asked to serve up a functional society on a platter. They 
cannot be expected to be the only ones serving up a functional electric 
grid, sewer systems, or revenue-sharing agreements about oil. As the 
former Chief of Staff said, we need the Iraqis to love their children 
more than they hate their neighbors. That is a powerful truism, but 
that does not come at the point of a gun.
  If Iraqi politicians think they can sit back and keep looking at the 
menu of options and squabble over the choices no matter what, Americans 
will keep delivering everything they order; they will keep picking up 
the tab, they will never feel the pressing urgency to build a 
functional country for themselves. It is time for that type of service 
to end. It is time for every American soldier to have the most 
wonderful privilege we as Senators have had who have visited Iraq: the 
privilege of booking a return home ticket.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia is recognized.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I rise for just a few minutes. I know 
the distinguished Senator from Michigan wants to speak, and I will not 
be long, but I feel compelled to come to the floor today to speak about 
S. 2634, to require a report back to the people of the United States 
and to the Congress on our country's plan to address al-Qaida and its 
affiliates on a worldwide basis. It is very disappointing to me that we 
would put something on the floor like that when, in fact, it is those 
who have objected to the plan we have who are causing all of the 
problems we are experiencing today. I wish to go through it for a 
moment because there is a plan.
  Nine days after 9/11, when the United States of America was attacked 
and New York City was attacked and the world saw the evil of al-Qaida 
and the evil of terrorism, the President of the United States went to 
the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and he made a speech in 
which he declared a change in U.S. policy--a change from one of 
reaction to one of preemption.
  So, first of all, we don't need a 60-day report back to the people of 
the United States on what our policy is. Our policy is one of 
preemption. Now, if you want to argue whether that is right or wrong, 
it is fine with me, but don't pretend as though we don't have a plan.
  Secondly, in terms of preemption, it is a proposition where you don't 
want to see what happened on 9/11 happen again, so you are proactive 
rather than reactive. We were attacked as a country in the late 1990s 
and early 2000 seven different times in which we reacted after the 
fact. In most cases, those reactions were benign. In one case, we sent 
one missile into an aspirin factory, but it was too late for the 
diplomats who had died, for the soldiers and sailors on the Cole who 
had died, and for others who had died tragically under terrorist 
attack.
  So, first and foremost, I would submit that we have a policy called 
preemption.
  Thirdly, I would submit it has been a pretty good policy because 
since the President of the United States established it in that speech 
on the floor of

[[Page 2531]]

the House in September of 2001, there has not been a single executed 
attack on the United States of America on our homeland. I think that is 
pretty good evidence that we have a plan, and a plan that is working in 
the interest of the safety of the American people.
  Fourth, recommendations regarding the distribution and deployment of 
U.S. military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other assets to meet the 
relative regional and country-specific threats described in paragraph 
1. The people who want to pass this bill are the very people who 2 
weeks ago would not allow us, in the House of Representatives, to 
extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Here we are asking 
what our plan is going to be. Yet people are voting against the United 
States having the intelligence to conduct the worldwide program against 
al-Qaida and its affiliates. You just can't have it both ways.
  I respect anybody being opposed to our deployment in Iraq. I respect 
anybody's opinion in this body--or any other body, for that matter--on 
the policy of the United States. But do not on the one hand assume we 
have no policy and then on the other hand vote against every meaningful 
contribution to the policy we do have, and the absolute prima facie 
evidence of that is FISA. Go look at the votes in the Senate on who 
voted against the extension of FISA, and you will find the same people 
who are supporting and furthering S. 2634. It is on its face patently 
unacceptable.
  Lastly, it requires recommendations to ensure that the global 
deployment of the U.S. military of personnel and equipment best meets 
threats identified and described in paragraph 1; and, A, doesn't 
undermine the military readiness; B, requires the deployment of Reserve 
units more than twice, once every 4 years; and C, requires further 
extension of deployments of members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
  Let me interpret what that means. In 60 days, they want us to report 
to our enemies exactly what our military deployments are going to be in 
the future. One thing you don't do when your sons and daughters are 
engaged in harm's way around the world is tell your enemy what your 
game plan is. Sure, you should have one, and it should be one we all 
listen to on the fourth floor in our secured briefing rooms, but don't 
require it to be advertised to the world.
  We live in the greatest, freest, most liberty-loving country in the 
world. We fight in this body every day to protect the Bill of Rights. 
But we have to recognize something: The terrorists don't want what we 
have. They don't want us to have what we have. They don't want us to 
have a first amendment to protect speech or for me to be able to stand 
up here and express myself. They don't want a law-abiding citizen to be 
able to carry a firearm or own a firearm. They don't want you to be 
able to worship on Sunday or worship on Friday or worship on Saturday 
or worship five times a day if you are a Muslim. They want to be able 
to dictate how you worship and whom you worship. We have to remember 
that, as we talk about the individual liberties and freedom we protect, 
those are the very liberties al-Qaida and its affiliates, as this bill 
portends, want to take away from us. The last thing we want to do is 
pass legislation requiring us to give them our game plan.
  I welcome debate on these issues anytime we want to come to the 
floor. I take pride in the accomplishments of the young men and women 
who stand today in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in other places around the 
world furthering the interests of the United States of America and 
protecting us against al-Qaida and its operatives. We have a policy, 
and it is called preemption. We have a plan, and it is our plan, and it 
doesn't need to be advertised to them. Most importantly of all, we have 
the finest men and women in the world executing that plan today around 
the world on behalf of the people of the United States of America. But 
let's not require disclosure of our plan, and let's not pretend we 
don't have a way to attack al-Qaida and its affiliates. We do. It is 
called preemption. As of yet, they haven't hit us on our territory, in 
our country since the day we established that as the policy of the 
United States of America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, will the Senator from Georgia yield 
for a question?
  Mr. ISAKSON. Absolutely.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I wish to ask the Senator through the Chair--he 
indicated that our strategy vis-a-vis al-Qaida after 9/11 has to do 
with the doctrine of preemption. I am intrigued by that. I know that 
was a justification for going into Iraq, but I wonder if the Senator 
could explain how the doctrine of preemption is going to help us 
against an organization that is existing in some 80 countries in the 
world. Are we going to invade and preempt 80 different nations?
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, after seeing what al-Qaida wants to do 
to us and has done to us, I don't think we should minimize what the 
effort might be that we have to take.
  I say to the Senator from Wisconsin, it is one of preemption, and the 
No. 1 way to preempt is to know in advance what the enemy is going to 
do, and the No. 1 way to do that is to be able to surveil known 
enemies. That is why we have the FISA bill. You can preempt when you 
have the knowledge. If you don't have the knowledge and you strip your 
intelligence agency of the business, yes, they are going to grow in 80 
countries, and yes, they are going to hit us. So we have a policy of 
preemption. The best way to preempt is to have good intelligence, and 
the best way to get their attention is to let them realize we will go 
after them wherever they are as long as they declare war on the United 
States of America.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. So you are not referring here to the doctrine of 
preemption to use as a justification for invading Iraq; you are talking 
about the need for intelligence, is that correct?
  Mr. ISAKSON. The President of the United States--I believe it was 9 
days after 9/11--announced the change of U.S. policy to be one of 
preemption. That is what I addressed in my remarks. The FISA reference 
I made was to say that I found it a little unusual for the people who 
were supporting the bill of the Senator from Wisconsin--whom I 
completely respect--to be most of the same people who voted against us 
having the intelligence to be able to preempt them. And then to have a 
bill that portends we don't have a policy? I just didn't think it made 
good sense.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, if the Senator will further yield for 
a question, I understand what he is saying in terms of the need for 
intelligence, but the doctrine of preemption that was announced by the 
President 9 days after 9/11 and through that period was not about 
intelligence. It had to do with the notion of where we could intervene 
in various nations. So I am just a little bit confused about that and 
trying to understand the connection.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, responding through the Chair, I 
appreciate the clarification. My point is you can't intervene if you 
don't know where it is going to happen.
  Let me just make a point, if I can. I live in the great State of 
Georgia, and I live in a suburb of Atlanta. There will be a trial in 
April of two students at Georgia Institute of Technology--Georgia Tech. 
Because of the PATRIOT Act and the FISA law, our intelligence agencies 
tracked communications from Islamabad, Pakistan, into Atlanta, GA, to 
the library at Georgia Tech to two students, Islamic students who were 
then communicating to Toronto, Canada, to establish a cell in Atlanta. 
Days before they were to activate the plan of that cell, our 
authorities moved in and put them under arrest, and they are going to 
trial. The cell was never activated. No lives were lost. That is how 
you preempt. You preempt through intelligence, you preempt from knowing 
what the enemy is going to do before they do it, and you preempt by 
having the strong intelligence and military forces to make it work.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Madam President, I appreciate the Senator responding to 
me. I will simply say that I virtually

[[Page 2532]]

agree with that general proposition that we need to be able to have the 
information and we need to stop terrorist attacks, and I am glad we 
were able to do it in Georgia.
  But the fact is, al-Qaida is operating in 80 countries around the 
world, and because of putting so much focus on Iraq, including so much 
focus of our intelligence system in Iraq, we don't have the adequate 
resources to preempt terrorist attacks throughout the world. That is 
the very problem. There are terrorist attacks going on in places such 
as Algeria and Morocco and Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, and because 
we are so consumed with Iraq, we can't pursue the very notion of 
preempting the terrorist attacks to which the Senator from Georgia 
properly refers.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, first let me indicate that as my 
colleagues were speaking a moment ago, I think it is incredibly 
important to understand that, in fact, we are talking about a threat in 
80 countries, and we do have a FISA law that, in fact, has worked, and 
no one is suggesting we do not have the need for strong intelligence 
and support for our intelligence operations. In fact, that is what all 
of us are willing to see happen. But what we are talking about in this 
resolution is whether we are going to continue to keep our focus on a 
country that is now in the middle of a civil war or whether we are 
going to redirect our efforts to address our real threats not only 
abroad but threats at home.
  When we talk about the threats to our families, I would suggest that 
if we are now spending somewhere around $15 billion a month, some say, 
that when we look at what could be done here at home to address the 
very real threats of job loss, people losing their homes, children 
walking into schools that are crumbling, the lack of health care, those 
are also very important threats.
  So we certainly want to make sure we are safe and address those 
threats abroad, but, more broadly, we have many threats affecting our 
families right now, and they expect us to use the very best judgment to 
keep them safe both from threats outside our country as well as from 
threats at home, including a huge economic cloud over many families.
  Madam President, I rise today to lend my strong voice of support for 
the Feingold legislation to provide the safe redeployment of U.S. 
troops from Iraq, and to refocus us on, in fact, those things that are 
threats to our country and to the families of this country. Tonight, 
591 members of the Michigan National Guard will bed down after a long 
day of working and fighting and facing danger at every turn in the 
harshest physical conditions imaginable. For every single one of these 
men and women, a family will go to sleep in Michigan tonight worried 
that their son or daughter, father or mother, sister or brother won't 
make it home.
  The true cost of this war cannot be measured in dollars and cents. 
The real cost is measured in the sacrifices of our brave men and women 
and their families every day. This cost is more than just the 
possibility and the reality of physical danger. This cost includes the 
sacrifices that every single American family makes by being apart from 
each other time and time again. It isn't right what is happening; it 
isn't fair; it isn't safe. It isn't making us safer as a country, and 
we need to change this policy.
  That is why I am so grateful that, once again, Senator Reid has made 
it a priority for us to focus on the war in Iraq and what is happening 
to troops and families and people here at home, and the cost of the 
lost opportunity by spending upwards of $15 billion a month now in 
Iraq.
  Tonight 591 Guard members in Iraq, with 591 families at home, 591 
will have missed birthdays, missed Father's Days and Mother's Days, 
missed high school graduations and children's first steps or 
anniversaries or family funerals or holidays; 591 will have missed 
paychecks, sidetracked careers, with small businesses and farms put in 
economic danger; 591 lives that will never be the same; 591 sets of 
missed opportunities that will never be replaced. And these members of 
the Michigan National Guard make up only a fraction of the 160,000 men 
and women in uniform currently serving bravely and honorably in Iraq, 
or the countless others who have served.
  In too many cases, these men and women are back in Iraq for their 
second, third, or fourth redeployment. In addition to the 591 who are 
already deployed, there are about 1,000 members of the Michigan 
National Guard who have been mobilized and who will deploy this year. 
Many of them will be doing their second, third, or fourth deployment to 
a combat zone. This year alone, there will be a thousand more missed 
paychecks, a thousand more missed birthdays and holidays and special 
occasions, and a thousand more lives that will never be the same.
  Our fighting men and women are the greatest single resource our 
military has, and this Government is abusing that resource. America 
puts our trust in our military to defend us. When our sons and 
daughters join the military, they are putting their trust in us to give 
them the tools, the resources they need, and to treat them with the 
respect they have earned. The current administration policies on 
redeployment have violated that trust. Those policies have let our 
troops down. Once again, I am proud to join with my colleague from 
Wisconsin in saying: Enough is enough when it comes to placing our 
armed services in harm's way by stretching them to the breaking point 
with redeployment after redeployment. Enough is enough when it comes to 
being in the middle of a civil war. And enough is enough when it comes 
to this administration taking its eye off the ball on the war on 
terror.
  We are all aware of the worsening situation in Afghanistan. However, 
this administration continues to focus on a civil war in Iraq. Our 
Armed Forces have traveled a tough road since we invaded Iraq. They 
have shouldered a heavy burden with pride, with confidence, and with 
honor. We have asked extraordinary things from them at every turn, and 
at every turn they have delivered. They have done us all proud. They 
have faced tough situations and have done their duty. Now we need to do 
what is right for them. It is time to face the tough situations. It is 
time to make the hard choices, to make them proud of us, and it is time 
to remove them from the civil war in Iraq, to change course, and to 
refocus, as this bill does, and redistribute our resources to those 
areas that truly address the threats facing our families and our 
country.
  America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are always there 
when we call on them. The question is: Will we be there for them? What 
this legislation proposes is as simple as it is right. It requires our 
forces in Iraq to target operations against al-Qaida and other 
international terrorist groups.
  Why is this important? Because al-Qaida has declared war against us. 
We know that. The people in Iraq are in the middle of a civil war that 
is something they now have to address and come to terms with and bring 
their own resources to address. So while our troops are in Iraq, they 
should be targeting those who have said they wished to do harm to us.
  Also, our troops in Iraq would be required to focus on providing 
security for U.S. personnel, of course, and that is extremely necessary 
in order to bring them home safely. I understand the Iraqi security 
forces are still developing, still learning, as I have met with them in 
traveling to Iraq. We have heard certainly of the continual need to 
train, the need for them to continue to develop, and we know we have a 
role in supporting that, and this bill recognizes that fact. It would 
allow our troops to continue to train Iraqi security forces, but only 
if our troops are training the Iraqis who have not been involved in the 
sectarian violence or attacks against our troops.
  This bill will allow our troops to continue to train the Iraqi 
security forces, but only if that training does not result in our 
troops being in combat. Training, yes; but they need to step up at this 
point, after 5 years, and be the ones at the front line.

[[Page 2533]]

  This bill also brings our troops home safely. It specifically allows 
our military to train and equip itself to ensure its safety. Most 
importantly, it requires that we begin to bring our troops home.
  This administration said a surge was necessary; that the surge would 
give the Government of Iraq the time to reach the political solutions 
necessary to end their civil war and to end the violence. They said 
time was needed. Well, the Government has had time, and during this 
time our troops have continued to pay the price. Our troops have been 
caught in the middle of a civil war. They have been victims of IEDs. 
They have come home with post-traumatic stress disorder and other 
mental and physical ailments. The bottom line is, it is time for our 
troops to be placed first and to begin to bring them home.
  That is all this bill does, and it does that while allowing our 
troops to continue to focus on who we all agree is the real enemy: Al-
Qaida.
  On October 11, 2002, I was proud to be 1 of 23 Members of this body 
who stood in this Chamber and said the war was the wrong choice. This 
administration, I believe, since that time has in fact failed our 
troops and the American people by committing our troops to a war 
without a clear reason or goal, and by squandering resources that are 
desperately needed here at home to rebuild America and to invest in 
American communities. This administration has failed our troops by not 
having a clear mission for our Armed Forces in Iraq, by not providing 
the proper equipment and body armor and logistical support for the 
troops, by poor planning on the invasion in Iraq and the lack of 
planning for how to secure the country and what would happen after the 
initial attack. I believe they have failed by sending our brave men and 
women back into harm's way over and over again without the proper rest 
between redeployments.
  History will be a harsh judge of this administration, because I 
believe they have failed the American people. This administration 
failed because they took their eye off the ball. This legislation is 
about putting our eye back on the target of what we ought to be doing 
together.
  In closing, let me reemphasize the fact that while the most important 
thing is to be supporting our troops, to be addressing the threats to 
them while they are in harm's way, to address the lives lost and the 
people who are coming home who will need help the rest of their lives, 
it is also important to look at this from the standpoint of the 
precious resources that have been lost at a time when so many American 
families are struggling. We always make decisions based on values and 
priorities, and it is shocking to me, as we have seen this war go 
forward, to see upwards of, some say $12 billion, some say now upwards 
of $15 billion a month--not part of the normal budget--going directly 
on the national deficit, the national debt, to be paid by our children 
and grandchildren. But let's say it is $15 billion a month. To see that 
continue month after month after month, and to see us work together on 
a bipartisan basis to pass a critically important piece of legislation 
to increase health care for 10 million children across this country, 
which costs only $7 billion a year, and yet that is vetoed--there is 
not a willingness to invest in American children to the tune of less 
than half of what it is costing per month in Iraq--these are the wrong 
values and wrong priorities.
  We see schools being rebuilt in Iraq, and yet I can go in too many 
schools in Michigan where there is a bucket in the corner to catch the 
water dripping from the roof, or we don't have the kind of computer 
technology in the classroom every single child will need to know how to 
use in any job they get, from working at a gas station to working at a 
technology company. We know we have crumbling roads and bridges here in 
America. We know every time we invest in and rebuild in America, those 
are jobs that aren't going to be outsourced to another country. Those 
are American jobs--rebuilding American roads and American bridges and 
water and sewer systems in America. We are told we can't do that, that 
there are not the resources to invest in America, but we are spending 
$15 billion a month in Iraq.
  We now have a whole new group of industries producing what are called 
green collar jobs, and I am very proud to have joined in working with 
many of my colleagues to focus on the new alternative energy 
technologies and other things we need to do--small investments with 
huge results for energy independence and creating more jobs and 
addressing global warming.
  And yet we consistently hear there are not the resources for any new 
investments in America. There are so many areas where we are told there 
is no money: for doing the bold research we need to solve Alzheimer's 
and Parkinson's disease and to aggressively move forward on other 
health research; the desire not to help those who lost their jobs 
because of trade, to be able to go back and get the training they need 
to be able to move on to new kinds of jobs so that we have a middle 
class in this country; and that families can pay their mortgage and 
electric bill and heating bill and know that they have the opportunity 
to keep their standard of living in our country.
  There is a lot at stake. And this bill, while it focuses on what we 
need to do to change the mission, to refocus on ways to truly keep us 
safe, to begin to bring our troops home from Iraq, from a civil war 
where we need to leave and redirect our troops to those areas where, in 
fact, we will be focusing on the real threat to our country, that is, 
on the surface, what this legislation does.
  I would suggest it does more than that because this is about who we 
are as Americans, what our priorities are: No. 1, how to make sure we 
are truly smart enough to be focused on what keeps us safe; and, No. 2, 
understanding that we have much to do in our country.
  Our families are feeling squeezed on all sides. Communities need 
help, and we have an opportunity to not only redirect our troops and 
our focus but to redirect critical dollars to be able to make sure, in 
fact, we are finally putting the interests of America's families first.
  I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Salazar). The Senator from South Carolina 
is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Oklahoma will 
return in a moment. If it would be appropriate, I would suggest that he 
go. I think he will go next, followed by myself, a Democrat, then 
Senator Sessions.
  I will get started. Senator Coburn, I think, has been to Iraq just a 
week or so ago. I look forward to hearing what he has to say about the 
condition on the ground as he found it.
  And to my friend, Senator Feingold, one thing I think all of us 
should agree upon is that you pushed this idea of withdrawing from Iraq 
for a very long time. There is no question in my mind that you are very 
sincere, that you believe it makes America stronger not weaker, and 
that if the polls were 90-10 to stay, you would be doing this, simply 
because that is what motivated you as a Senator.
  I have nothing but the utmost respect for what makes you tick as a 
Senator. I know you take on some very difficult challenges, sometimes 
not popular, and this particular piece of legislation, I think, is ill-
advised. I will speak for a while as to why it should be defeated.
  But the author of the amendment is consistent, is as patriotic as 
anybody else who will speak, and we need more of this, not less. So 
what is the Senate all about? We are talking about important things. 
There are a million things going on in this country that need to be 
addressed. But I think taking some time to talk about Iraq, where we 
are, where we are going to go, and how we are going to get there is 
probably time well spent. I think most Americans are very interested in 
the outcome in Iraq.
  Having just returned from Iraq, I think Senator Coburn can give us 
his view of what he found.
  I yield the floor and will speak after he is through.

[[Page 2534]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, first of all, I, too, want to express my 
respect for the Senator from Wisconsin. We have a lot of things on 
which we agree. This happens to be something on which we adamantly 
disagree. But I appreciate, as someone who pushes the limits in this 
body, his desire to have this debate because I think it is important.
  We just heard the Senator from Michigan talk, and the statement would 
have been a fairly accurate reflection 2 years ago. But it has nothing 
to do, and it is not even anywhere close, to what is ongoing in Iraq 
today.
  I think the case could have been made 2 years ago that Iraq was in a 
civil war. Nobody who has visited Iraq in the last 2 months can make 
that claim. It is not there. Outside of the Green Zone, I met with 
people whose daughters had been murdered by al-Qaida. I met with people 
whose father had been murdered. I met with both Sunni and Shia in the 
same village, in multiple villages, who had reconciled because they 
reject the terrorism of al-Qaida.
  There is no question lots of mistakes have been made with the Iraq 
policy. But the claims under which we try to describe Iraq today in 
light of how it was 12 months ago are fictitious at best and damaging 
probably in terms of what the truth is.
  Do we find ourselves in a very difficult situation? Absolutely. Is 
this an expensive war? Absolutely. Would we all like to not be where we 
are? I think almost everybody would agree to that. But probably the 
more important question for me is, where are we today compared to where 
we were 12 months ago, and have, in fact, the mistakes of the past been 
reflected in policies that have changed and bode for a greater future 
absent additional mistakes?
  The desire of the Senator from Wisconsin to have us out in a way that 
limits our exposure is something that I would love to be able to see. 
But the practical nature of what he wants to accomplish could not be 
accomplished in less than 18 to 24 months. I mean, it could not happen. 
You go and talk to the military; it could not happen without us leaving 
tons of equipment.
  But the point is, we should not dwell on that. The point is, did we 
make the necessary changes that can create an outcome that gives us an 
honorable exit from the situation, and does it leave a genocide behind? 
I firmly believe, having traveled--my trip prior to this one was 6 
months before the surge. I want to tell you the difference is like 
night and day, everywhere I went. I duplicated places I went before.
  So with the earnestness that the Senator from Wisconsin drives his 
position, we ought to reflect on what has been accomplished. I also 
find it very disingenuous to talk about the cost of this war by the 
person who sponsored more legislation and greater Government spending 
than anybody in this body in the 109th Congress, in the first session 
of this Congress.
  The fact is, $349 billion worth of new spending was coauthored by the 
Senator from Michigan last year, $349 billion, the same Senator who 
voted to fund the bridge to nowhere.
  I happen to agree we ought to be paying for the war. We ought to be 
paying for the war, and we could easily pay for the war by eliminating 
wasteful spending.
  I would direct you to the Reader's Digest last month where they 
estimated $1 trillion we are missing in wasteful spending. That is an 
underestimate. So for us to make a claim of a fiscal nature, by the 
person who has cosponsored more spending than anybody in this body, and 
has voted against amendments to decrease wasteful spending, is somewhat 
less than genuine, I believe.
  I think the other thing that needs to be said is we had a debate, and 
we actually funded the surge. It actually happened. We ought to be 
talking about what happened with that. To me, it is phenomenal, the 
difference. I will tell you, I am very--we lost a soldier from Ardmore, 
OK, a 19-year-old soldier killed by an IED.
  How can it be that we can continue to do this unless we are doing it 
for the right reasons and the right cause? I believe if we walk away, 
no matter how we got there, rightly or wrongly, if we walk away, what I 
see happening, from my experience in Iraq in 1993 after the first gulf 
war and before this one, as a medical missionary, here is what I see 
happening: If we do what the Senator from Wisconsin wants us to do, and 
we effectively carry this out, I see an unstable northern Iraq. I see a 
war between Iran, Turkey, and Kurdistan. I see a marked civil war 
between Shia and Sunni, with involvement of the Sunni Triangle, Sunni 
crescent. I see a total destabilization of the Mideast. But beyond all 
of that, what I see is tremendous additional tragedy that we will have 
impacted onto the people of Iraq, and in the deaths of 500,000 to 1 
million more people.
  And the question ought to be: Do we have a moral obligation to fix 
what we started? The assessment of the Senator from Wisconsin is that 
we cannot fix it so therefore we ought to come home, we ought to get 
out, that it was a mistake to begin with; it does not matter what has 
happened in the past other than we learned from it.
  The question is, what can we do about the future? I want to tell you, 
I do not buy everything the Pentagon says. I am pretty critical across 
their spending, across everything else. I accused them of lying to me 
on the training of Iraqi troops in 2006.
  But when you see what has been transformed in the training of troops 
in Iraq, which is comparable to our training of our own troops over the 
same period of time, and what they have accomplished both in terms of 
synergism with both their equipment, their military leaders, and their 
troops, and they walk out of training as a Sunni and Shia together and 
you see that and you say we are going to walk away from that, we are 
not going to finish it, we are going to allow this thing to collapse--
and it will.
  So then the question is, have we made another mistake in not 
fulfilling an obligation in something that we started? I do not believe 
we can do that. If we do that, I think the blood of every Iraqi that is 
displaced or dies after that is on us--not on the Taliban, not on al-
Qaida, not on Shia extremists, not on Sunni extremists but on us.
  We can win. We will win. We can. There is political progress all 
across the board, locally and at the regional and at the national 
government level. I would remind the Members of this body how long it 
took us to get a functioning government, a functioning government after 
our independence, one that was based on a constitution, one that was 
based on the rule of law. It was not smooth sailing. We did not do it 
in a short period of time. And we did not even get it right when it 
came to equal rights of individuals. We did not get it right. Yet we 
are frustrated with that.
  I see a new day in Iraq. It is not over. It is dangerous, it is still 
very dangerous. But the progress, the improvement, the reconciliation 
between Shia and Sunni is unbelievable.
  In province across province, the Shia, the Sunni awaking, the sons of 
Iraq phenomenon, the coordination of local governments across ethnic 
lines is in stark contrast with what was there a year and a half ago. 
Do we just abandon that? Think about the message it sends if we are not 
going to create a stable Iraq. What immediately do they do? They 
immediately start going to their own intrinsic ethnic corner. We 
divide. We send the Kurds one way, the Shia one way, and the Sunni one 
way. We create a holocaust.
  I want to say publicly I have had a lot of misgivings about what our 
country has done in the Middle East. But I have no misgivings at all at 
this time about the course we are on. The leadership of General 
Petraeus, the leadership of Ambassador Crocker, the leadership of the 
people within Iraq, sheikhs within small communities risking their 
lives every day to stand up and say: I will join hands with a Sunni, 
with the Shia. I am going to reject al-Qaida and we are going to get 
our lives back together--that is happening. That is a dynamic that is 
forcefully happening because people want peace.
  This will eliminate that movement. This will create insecurity. This 
will

[[Page 2535]]

drive people to their corners. This will drive people to extreme 
positions. In fact, what we have accomplished in the last 12 months 
will be denuded and neutered out to the point where we will have 
created a worse situation rather than a better one.
  To the soldiers and families who have sacrificed so much in this war, 
I say thank you from my family. The real problem of the administration, 
the mistake they made, is we should all be sacrificing for this war, 
not just our military families. We have refused to do that as Members 
of the Senate by making sure that we pay for this war, by getting rid 
of things that are lower priorities, getting rid of things that are 
duplicative. We didn't do that. We said, we will charge it to our kids. 
We can't ruffle any feathers and make the hard choices.
  The Senator from Michigan said: We do things based on value and 
priorities. That is baloney. We do things based on how we get 
reelected, with the exception of the Senator from Wisconsin, who is one 
of the most honorable men in this body. He never thinks about that 
issue. He thinks about what he thinks is right. But the way we do 
things around here is what is politically expedient, not what is right. 
For her to claim that that is how we do things, when we can't even get 
rid of billions of dollars in duplicative programs, $8 billion worth of 
buildings that the Pentagon wants to get rid of because it might ruffle 
some politician's feathers somewhere--we don't do things based on 
priority or on value. We do it on political expediency.
  Again, I thank the troops and the families who are sacrificing. I am 
amazed at the progress that has been made, literally amazed. I believe 
we ought to honestly look at that before we walk a different direction. 
We ought to truly reassess where we are. It is a big price. I know it 
is. We have paid a big price in this endeavor. It is fair to question 
whether we should continue it. But it is not fair to not look at what 
has happened over the last 12 months in a realistic and open assessment 
that says, is there light at the end of the tunnel? I will tell you, 
there is. Individually, in talking to Shia and Sunni families while 
over there, outside of the Green Zone, walking among them without 
protection, seeing the hope in their eyes that finally things are going 
to get back to where they can take care of their families, move ahead 
with their goals and their personal lives, the leadership exhibited by 
our military, not just in leadership roles but all the way down to the 
private and what they are doing and how they are doing it and how they 
are carrying it out in Iraq, is something we can all be proud of. I 
don't think we should jeopardize what they are doing by voting for this 
bill. It is great for us to question. Sometimes we haven't done that 
well enough. But to ignore the reality of what is happening today in 
Iraq and the trend lines and the movement lines and the economic growth 
lines and the power lines and the oil production lines and the 
agreement among Shia and Sunni at all of these regional and provincial 
levels, to ignore that is a grave mistake on our part.
  It is my hope that we don't carry forward with this idea. It is also 
my hope that we will truly recognize, not be blinded, not be sold a 
bill of goods. I am not suggesting that. We should ask the tough 
questions. But to deny the marked change, the tremendous progress, the 
tremendous freedom, the tremendous lifting of the burden on the Iraqi 
people that has happened in the last 12 months and not say that means 
something and not say that that means we are going absolutely in the 
right direction--we haven't won this war, but we certainly have them on 
the run. We certainly have the Iraqi people enamored with us to the 
point where we are not despised. We are welcome now in the vast 
majority of Iraq. In 95 percent of Iraq we are welcome because we are a 
liberator of them from al-Qaida, not from Saddam but from al-Qaida, the 
one who cut their 8-year-old daughter's head off because she looked at 
them wrong, the ruthlessness of radical Islam. That is what is at stake 
right now. We can differ in our approach on how we might battle that, 
but this is the heat sink right now. Iraq is the heat sink for al-
Qaida. It is where they are, where they are coming.
  We are winning. The Iraqi people are winning, and the Iraqi troops 
are winning. Let's not destroy that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I returned Thursday of last week from Iraq 
after my tenth visit. A year ago this time I quite honestly thought we 
were going to lose this thing--incredibly depressed, because you could 
see over about a 2\1/2\ to 3-year period it getting worse with each 
visit. Things have changed dramatically. But it is important for every 
Senator to put Iraq in context so their constituents and the Nation can 
judge what our proposals are and what makes us tick on Iraq.
  I believe Iraq is the central battlefront, not the only one, in the 
overall struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. At the time Saddam 
Hussein was invaded and replaced, it wasn't to drive al-Qaida out of 
Iraq, absolutely not. It was a dictator who had created war and chaos 
in the region as long as he had been a dictator, who had defied 17 U.N. 
resolutions to let us inspect his weapons program. It was the Russians, 
the French, and every other intelligence organization in the world 
believing that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire weapons of mass 
destruction. It was basically neutering the effectiveness of the U.N. 
The Oil for Food Program designed to help the Iraqi people and control 
the dictator was a joke. So the reason we invaded Iraq is because the 
dictator was defying the world. He made us want to believe he was 
trying to procure weapons. Because if he wasn't, he should have opened 
his country to inspection. He was living off the Oil for Food Program.
  We had 70 something Senators vote to authorize force. The reason most 
of us voted that way is because all the evidence possessed by everybody 
in the world suggested that Saddam Hussein was not becoming the 
solution to the Mideast; he was still the problem.
  What happened? We displaced the dictator and we got it very badly 
wrong after the fall of Baghdad. We had a model that was short on 
troops. There was a period of time when we allowed the country to 
become lawless. Instead of stopping looting and pillaging, we let it 
grow. We disbanded the Iraqi Army, and they could have been helpful, at 
least some of them. We made a lot of mistakes after the fall of 
Baghdad. For about 3 years plus, we were pursuing a strategy that was 
not producing results. Why? Because we didn't have enough troops. The 
enemy was getting stronger, not weaker.
  We had a great debate last year as to whether we should change 
course. Everybody in the body suggested we change course, because it 
was clear the old strategy was not working and it was depressing to go 
to Iraq and hear the people in charge on the ground say things are 
fine, when you knew they weren't.
  I am not a military commander. I am a military lawyer. But common 
sense would have told you a couple years ago that this thing was 
slipping away. So it was time to act and change course. There were two 
ways to do it. You could pull the plug and start pulling people out or 
you could add more troops to secure the Nation in a way that we should 
have done after the fall of Baghdad.
  I will take responsibility for my point of view of not pushing harder 
early on to have more troops. But I can promise you this: For a couple 
years, along with Senator McCain, we pretty much were the lone voices 
to add more into Iraq. As the polling numbers on Iraq changed, the 
desire to add more troops dramatically got more difficult for a 
politician. But that is what we needed. I am here to tell you a year 
after the surge began that those who said the war in Iraq was lost were 
wrong. Those who said the surge had failed last April before it even 
started were wrong. Senator Feingold passionately believes that the 
troop presence in Iraq should change, and he was suggesting withdrawal 
long before it was popular. There are some people who have been playing 
Iraq for the next

[[Page 2536]]

election, not for the next generation or the next decade. They have 
made bold statements such as it is all lost, that we have lost in Iraq. 
They never told us who won, because wars are about winning and losing.
  If you believe, as I do, that this is a battle in a greater war, 
could you afford to lose? What is the price to the United States to 
lose a battle against al-Qaida anywhere in the world? What would it 
cost us as a nation for al-Qaida to be able to stand on every street 
corner in the Middle East and tell people: We drove the Americans out 
of Iraq? They came to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad for the very 
reason we went into Iraq, except with a different result in mind. We 
wanted to replace the dictator and allow people in Iraq who had been 
oppressed for 30-something years to have a better life and ally 
themselves with us and be a peaceful neighbor rather than an agent for 
destruction in the region. We wanted to allow a woman to have a say 
about her children. We wanted Sunnis and Shias to be able to live 
together and prosper. We wanted a peaceful Iraq.
  Al-Qaida saw what we were doing, and they came in droves to make sure 
we were not successful. The question has to be: Why does bin Laden care 
about Iraq? Why is he sending everybody he can get to go into Iraq? Why 
is he disappointed with the performance of al-Qaida in Iraq? Because he 
said the land of the two rivers is the great battle of our time. The 
land of the two rivers is Iraq. Bin Laden, no matter what you think 
about him, understands the consequences of us succeeding in Iraq. It is 
a nightmare to his way of doing business. The thought of a woman being 
able to run for office, hold office, have a say about her children is a 
nightmare. The idea that Sunni, Shias, and Kurds can live together and 
not be told how to worship God is an absolute affront to his way of 
thinking. The idea that the Iraqi people would align themselves with us 
for a peaceful Mideast must drive him crazy.
  They came, al-Qaida, with a mission in mind. That was to drive us out 
and kill this effort at moderation. Thank God the President changed 
course with a mission in mind. We put more troops on the ground 
beginning last February. A year later I am here to tell my colleagues, 
it worked. All of those who said we had lost in Iraq and the surge had 
failed were absolutely wrong. Thank God we didn't listen to them. 
Because if we had left Iraq, al-Qaida, as sure as I am standing here, 
would be claiming all over the world they beat America. Iran would be 
the biggest winner, second only to al-Qaida. And Iraq would be a 
chaotic place where the Sunni-Shia fight would spill over to the 
region. If you think there is a problem now between Turkey and the 
Kurdish rebels up in the north, imagine a collapsed Iraq. What is that 
worth to prevent? Let me tell you what it is worth. It is worth 
everything we have to throw at it.
  Let's talk about the troops for a minute. We all appreciate them. I 
don't doubt that one bit. But answer this question: Why do they 
reenlist after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan at higher levels than 
anywhere else in the military? What do they see that we don't see? Why 
do they keep going back the second and third and fourth time?
  My opinion is: They get it. They understand their commitment and 
their sacrifice now will prevent their children from having to go to 
such a battle in the future. And they buy this idea that if we can 
contain extremism and defeat it in Iraq, we are safer here at home. 
They believe it so much they keep going and going and going.
  Let me tell you something no one said yet: Well done. We should take 
this 30 hours and celebrate what I think is the most successful 
military counterinsurgency operation in the history of the world. We 
should take the 30 hours and go over in detail what the commanders and 
the troops under their command have accomplished. It is a phenomenal 
story that will be talked about in military history for decades to 
come. It has exceeded every expectation I had. Adding more troops into 
Iraq, I thought, was essential and would matter, but I never dreamed it 
would matter this much.
  Let's talk about what has happened since the surge began.
  Monthly attack levels have decreased 60 percent since June of 2007 
and are now at the same levels as early as in 2005 and some points of 
2004. In other words, we are rolling back the clock on attacks.
  Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent since a year ago, 
dropping to a level not seen since the beginning of 2006.
  Now, what does that mean? The better security, the more likely the 
Iraqi people will step up to the plate and reconcile their differences. 
I have always believed that was the key to stabilizing Iraq.
  Now, when we try to do things such as immigration--and my good friend 
in the chair knows how hard that is--they run awful ads against you and 
say terrible things about you on the radio and make life pretty 
difficult for a politician to take on the hard things. Everybody likes 
doing the easy things. Very few of us like doing the hard things. But 
when you do the hard things, you get a lot of push-back. But we keep 
trying.
  Imagine trying to sit down across the table or the aisle with someone 
of a different sect, and they kill your family. Now, what kind of world 
is that? The violence in Iraq had gotten so out of control that the 
idea of political reconciliation, to me, was impossible. To expect 
people to go to Baghdad and solve their nation's problems--because the 
threat of violence covered the country, I knew we would never get 
reconciliation. But here is what I hoped.
  I hoped if we could turn this around and reduce civilian casualties 
and reduce the level of attacks and reduce sectarian deaths--which have 
decreased by 90 percent in the Baghdad security districts; listen to 
this: a 90-percent reduction in sectarian killings in Baghdad--I always 
believed if we could do that, the Iraqi people would rise to the 
occasion because they do want a new Iraq. That was my bet. That was my 
hope. And if they do not want it as much as I want it, or more than I 
want it, then it is never going to happen.
  But here is the evidence, after a year of sacrifice, blood, and 
treasure--not just by us but by the Iraqi people. Their army and 
security forces have increased by 100,000.
  Let me tell you what it is like to go to the recruiting station in 
Berkeley. You get pushed back because of the city council ordinance.
  Let me tell you what it was like to go to the recruiting station in 
parts of Iraq a year ago. They were killing people who were trying to 
join the army and security forces. They were attacking recruiting 
stations. They were getting the names of those who wanted to join the 
army and security forces, and they were coming after their families; 
and they still came.
  I have been to Iraq 10 times, and I can tell you, I met people the 
first couple visits who are now dead because the terrorists killed 
them. Because what the people were trying to do is create a moderate 
form of living that is an absolute nightmare for al-Qaida.
  I have always believed, after having gone there so many times, that 
the Iraqi people are willing to die for their own freedom, and if they 
can pull this off, it makes me and my family and my country safer. So 
that is why we stay, that is why we fight. And we are winning.
  What has happened in the last 60 to 90 days? Not only have we reduced 
the level of attacks by 60 percent--and civilian deaths are down by 75 
percent and sectarian deaths are down by 90 percent--we have doubled 
the amount of weapons caches found because we are getting better 
information from the population. They are telling us things they did 
not tell us before.
  Ten of the eighteen provinces have been taken over by Iraqi security 
forces. The Iraqi security forces grew by 100,000 in 2007 and stand now 
at more than half a million.
  All I can tell you is the Iraqi people have taken the opportunity we 
provided them with the surge to stand up for their own freedom. They 
are dying at 3 to 1 our rate. They have paid a

[[Page 2537]]

heavy price. Our country has paid a heavy price. But the reason the 
Iraqis keep coming after somebody falls is because they want a better 
way.
  If I had to put in a story line the most important aspect of the 
surge, it would be as follows: A Muslim country made up of different 
Islamic sects turned on al-Qaida. Listen to that. With better security 
and a strong commitment from the United States that we will be your 
ally, we will not leave you, we will not abandon you to this vicious 
enemy, they slowly but surely turned on al-Qaida, beginning in Anbar 
and now marching throughout the whole country.
  What does that mean for the overall war on terror? That is something 
we should be on the floor celebrating because the way you win this war 
is not: Kill every terrorist. The way you win this war is: You stand by 
forces of moderation and you give them the ability and the tools to 
change their own destiny.
  Look what has happened. Anbar Province, a year ago, was determined 
lost by the Marine Corps. This year, they celebrate a 5-K run through 
the streets of Ramadi. Why? Because the sheiks, the tribal leaders, the 
average citizen said no to al-Qaida, aligned themselves with us, and 
al-Qaida has been diminished in great measure.
  To those who want to defeat al-Qaida, stay with the Iraqi people and 
help them defeat al-Qaida. What a message to the Mideast: Muslims turn 
on al-Qaida with American support. What is that worth? That is 
priceless. That is how we win the war.
  GEN David Petraeus should have been the man or person of the year. 
What he has accomplished in a year absolutely is stunning, militarily. 
It has come at a heavy price in blood and treasure. But to all those 
who have served under his command, congratulations. You have made 
military history. You have made your country safer. You have been al-
Qaida's worst nightmare. And we are not going to let the Congress 
undercut you.
  Now, the surge was not just about killing al-Qaida. The surge was 
about providing better security so the Iraqi people could build 
capacity to defeat their own enemy, enemies within their country, and 
reconcile themselves.
  There have been major benchmarks out there for political 
reconciliation for quite a while. I said in October of last year, if I 
do not see progress by January or February of 2008, I am going to 
reevaluate my position vis-a-vis the Iraqi central government. One 
thing I can tell you, after a year, and going into March of 2008, the 
Iraqi political reconciliation has astonished me.
  They have passed the debaathification law, and they deserve credit 
for it. What does it mean? It means Sunnis who held jobs in the 
Government during the Saddam era are going to be allowed to get some of 
their jobs back. What does that mean in real terms? That means the 
Shias and the Kurds have looked at a former oppressive group--people 
who ran Saddam's government--and said: Come on back. Let's build a new 
Iraq.
  My God, what a statement to make. How hard that must have been for 
people who have lived under the thumb of Saddam Hussein and the people 
who ran his government, to turn to that same group and say: Let's move 
forward. Come back and help us build a new Iraq.
  A provincial powers law just passed. What does that mean? It means 
the central government in Iraq, where the Shias dominate, has allowed 
the opportunity for local elections to occur in October of this year, 
hopefully.
  That means that the Sunnis in Anbar can actually elect their own 
local leadership. They can elect people to send to Baghdad to represent 
their interests.
  That means the Shias in the south are going to have a chance to elect 
their equivalent of a mayor, a county councilman, a Governor.
  It means the central government, dominated by Shias, has turned to 
every province in Iraq--Sunni, Shia, and Kurd--and said: Instead of us 
running your life, you elect your local leaders.
  That means they bought into this idea of democracy, where people vote 
for whom they want to make local decisions.
  Here is what I predict: that in 2008 there will be provincial 
elections, and there will be a huge turnout. In 2005, the Sunnis 
boycotted the elections in Iraq because they were not certain that 
democracy was for them, and they were afraid of being left out. It is 
the Sunnis who are pushing for local elections, and they were able to 
win in Baghdad.
  They passed a $48 billion budget--something we cannot do. A $48 
billion budget has been passed, with the blessing of all groups, that 
will allow money to flow from Baghdad to reconstruct the country in 
every corner.
  The hardest thing for one politician to do for another is to reach a 
deal in allocating resources because you always want more for your 
people and less for the others. We still do that here. I love Colorado, 
but I like South Carolina to get its fair share; and usually that means 
I care more about South Carolina spending than I do Colorado. But 
people, such as the Presiding Officer and myself and everybody else in 
this body, usually were able to give and take and get a budget that 
helps everybody.
  Can you imagine how hard that must be for a group of people who have 
lived under a dictator who have never had that responsibility before 
and who have been suffering from violence inspired by al-Qaida, 
sectarian in nature? They were able to overcome that hatred and that 
bitterness that has been inspired by al-Qaida and say to each other: 
Here is the money of the country. You get your share.
  That is progress. That is hope. That is al-Qaida's worst nightmare.
  The one that means the most to me is that the general amnesty law was 
recently passed. I have been a military lawyer for 25 years and a 
student of history to some extent. What happened in Baghdad is 
astonishing. The prisons are full of insurgents. People aligned 
themselves with the insurgency during this lawless period. Blood has 
been taken and shed from each group, one to the other. Most of the 
people in jail are Sunnis. There are more and more Shia militia, but 
right now it is Sunnis.
  The central government in Baghdad passed a general amnesty law where 
a committee will be formed of all groups to go through the files of 
those in prison to allow them to come back home and be part of the new 
Iraq. That is a level of forgiveness and a desire to start over that 
had to be incredibly difficult because there is nothing sweeter than 
revenge.
  The people who were on the bottom in Iraq for a long time, the Shias 
and the Kurds, and those in the Sunni world who were trying to 
basically prevent Iraq from coming together as one, have now seen it is 
better for them to chart a new destiny, a new course together. They 
have a long way to go, and they are going to be fought at every turn.
  If you understand nothing else from this speech, as Senator McCain 
would say, understand this: al-Qaida is diminished, but they are not 
defeated. Their goal tonight or tomorrow or the next day is to create a 
spectacular attack that will make headlines all over the world, and 
people in this body will respond to those headlines and try to change 
course in policy. I would argue the worst thing we could do is allow 
one of the most vicious movements in the history of mankind to change 
American foreign policy because they have the ability and the desire to 
commit mass murder. So beware of al-Qaida. They are diminished, but 
they are not yet defeated, and they know they can't win in Iraq, but 
they are still not sure they can't win in Washington. They are not 
going to win in Anbar. They are not going to win in Baghdad, they are 
not going to win in Fallujah, they are not going to win in Diyala, and 
they are not going to win in Basra. But the question is, Can they still 
win in Washington? I hope the answer after this debate is no. If we 
would take winning in Washington off the table, reconciliation in Iraq 
would go at a faster pace, not a slower pace.
  Economic progress in the last year: Oil production in Iraq has risen 
by 50 percent over what it was a year ago. Oil production is up 50 
percent because

[[Page 2538]]

of better security. Oil revenues are double what they were a year ago, 
and the Iraqi central government has shared the resources with 
everybody in the country. Inflation has fallen from 66 percent to less 
than 5 percent in a year. What does better security buy you? It buys 
you a functioning economy, political reconciliation, and better 
military security. Electricity demand is up more than 25 percent since 
last year. People are purchasing, they are buying, they are building 
hopeful lives. There are 21 new health clinics in Baghdad, 1,885 new 
schools, and 604 refurbished schools throughout Iraq.
  People say: What about South Carolina? What about the schools in 
South Carolina? Lord knows we have our fair share of educational 
challenges in South Carolina and, like every other place in the 
country, we could use more money. But I am here to tell my constituents 
that the price to be paid in blood and treasure in the future losing 
Iraq is far greater than the price we are paying now, in my opinion. If 
I did not believe it, I would not say it. If the men and women in 
uniform didn't believe it, they wouldn't go back time and time and time 
again. If we can continue this model that has produced dramatic success 
beyond my imagination, we will win in Iraq, and everybody in this body, 
their families, and our Nation as a whole will be safer for the 
experience because it means al-Qaida lost.
  Al-Qaida came to Iraq with a purpose: to undermine this effort at 
moderation, stability. They came for a purpose: to make sure a woman 
never had a say about her children. And they are losing. They have not 
yet lost, but they are on the road to losing, and they know it.
  What is it worth for our country to align itself with a Muslim nation 
to turn on al-Qaida? It is worth everything to me. It is certainly 
worth my political future.
  A year ago, when this debate was started, the polls were incredibly 
against the idea of sending more troops. The need for more troops 
existed, in my opinion. A year later, the results of more troops and 
better security is astonishing.
  The way to get the Iraqi people to reconcile themselves is not to 
leave them, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that will encourage 
the enemy who is on the mat to get back up into the fight. The way to 
get them to reconcile themselves is to stand with them, to stand by 
them, invest in the training of their army, help them get on their 
feet. That is the way to beat al-Qaida. Winning is going to happen in 
Iraq unless we change this model here at home.
  People ask me: Senator Graham, what is winning? Winning, to me, is a 
stable, functioning government, aligned with democratic principles, at 
peace with its neighbors, that rejects Islamic extremism, will deny al-
Qaida a safe haven, and will align itself with us in the greater war on 
terror, and finally, will create a system where a mother can have a say 
about her children. We are not there yet, but we are well on our way.
  We have a model that will lead us to victory: a general who knows 
what he is doing and brave young men and women who are sacrificing 
because they understand the need to sacrifice. They are excited. They 
want to come home, but more than anything else, they want to win. That 
is why they keep going, going, going, and going. They are going to win 
unless we do something here at home to make it hard for them to do so.
  The worst thing we could do now as a nation is to ignore the results 
of the last year, worry more about the next election than we do about 
winning this global war, and try to get an advantage over each other 
based on the next election cycle. I hope the Members of this body will 
understand that the turnaround in Iraq is not only dramatic, it makes 
us safer as a nation here at home, and that we now have a model that 
will allow us to win what I think is a war we can't afford to lose.
  Let it be said, finally, that there are Muslims in this world of 
different sects who will come together and fight al-Qaida with us. Let 
it be said that there is a nation called Iraq that has lived under an 
oppressive dictatorship for over three decades, that is beginning to 
taste freedom, that they are fighting and dying for their own freedom 
in large measure, that they are beginning to reconcile their political 
differences, they are beginning to build a larger army that is combat 
ready, that they are beginning to create an economy that will allow 
them to sustain themselves, and they are beginning to create a society 
that will allow us to live in peace with them and be a force of 
moderation for the region. That, I say to my colleagues, is an outcome 
very beneficial to the United States.
  I am glad we are having this debate. I am glad we have a little bit 
of time in a chaotic election year to take a breath and at least allow 
one Senator to say to the troops: You are winning. You should be proud. 
Good job. We are behind you here at home. We are behind the policy you 
are trying to implement. I hope they come home sooner rather than 
later. I believe they will. But when they come home, they are going to 
come home in a way that will allow them to tell their grandchildren: I 
did something that mattered for our country. That is why they keep 
reenlisting.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss 
the state of our economy, the budget cuts proposed by this 
administration, and yes, the war in Iraq and the need to set our 
priorities straight in this country. Like my colleague from South 
Carolina, I wish to thank our troops. Like the Presiding Officer, I 
visited Iraq and saw firsthand the bravery of these troops everywhere I 
went. Of course, I was very focused on Minnesota troops. They would 
come up to me in cafeteria lines and airport tarmacs and never complain 
about a thing. They didn't complain about the heat or their equipment 
or their long tours of duties. Many of our Minnesota National Guard 
extended over and over and over again. They really only asked me to do 
one thing, and that was when I got home, that I call their moms and 
dads, their husbands and their wives, and tell them they were OK.
  When I got home, I talked to their families. I think I called over 50 
moms and dads, husbands and wives. I heard a little bit different 
story. I heard stories of families waiting and waiting and waiting, 
with anxiety over jobs that might be lost or never gotten back. One of 
the moms I talked to when I went back in March--I left a message for 
her. A few months later, I called her again when her son had been 
killed. I met her.
  I have to tell my colleagues, these troops, as my friend from South 
Carolina said, have done their duty. They deposed an evil dictator. 
They guaranteed free elections in Iraq. Now it is time for us to do our 
duty for them.
  We all know there can be no purely military solution in Iraq. This 
has been agreed to by so many military commanders and experts and 
Members of this body on both sides that it is not really worth arguing 
about anymore. We all recognize that true stability in Iraq will only 
come through political and economic compromises between Iraq's main 
ethnic groups and that only the Iraqis themselves can reach these 
agreements. Given this, I believe our strategy should be focused on 
transitioning to Iraqi authority and bringing in other countries and 
that we cannot keep doing this alone.
  I was listening to my friend from South Carolina speak so eloquently, 
and one of the things that struck me that he said was that this was 
priceless, and he meant this in the best of all ways. He said it was 
priceless. I just can't say this war has been priceless. After 4 years, 
5 years, over 3,600 American soldiers have been killed. Over 25,000 
have been wounded. We have been in this war now longer than World War 
II. Almost $450 billion--$450 billion has been spent. We cannot wait 
until next year to change our strategy.
  The President is intent on leaving the current situation for the next 
administration to resolve. Unfortunately, our soldiers in the field 
don't have the luxury of simply running up the clock

[[Page 2539]]

on this administration. We owe it to them to begin bringing our combat 
troops home. I think we all know we can't do this overnight. We know we 
are going to have troops remaining to guard our embassies and to train 
police and to act as special forces, but I do believe that if we want 
to push this Government to get its act together, the Iraqi Government, 
we have to send a clear message that we are not staying there 
indefinitely. So we owe it to our troops, but we also owe it to the 
people of this country. We can no longer continue to give the President 
the blank checks he keeps asking for. We must ensure the safety and the 
well-being of our troops in the field, but funding must be conditioned 
on a plan for responsible redeployment of U.S. combat forces from Iraq.
  Now, why is this so important to our own country and to our own 
future and to our own children? Well, as I said, the war in Iraq has 
already cost over $490 billion directly, and by some estimates it has 
cost the American people almost $1.5 trillion when factoring in all of 
the costs. For each month that passes, we spend another $12 billion on 
the war, and we cannot separate the President's spending in Iraq from 
the economic and the budgetary problems we face.
  One of the things that has always really bothered me on behalf of the 
people whom I represent is that this administration never really 
adequately calculated the repercussions of this war. I think the troops 
in the field--and I will say one thing. Despite the clear disagreements 
on strategy for this war, there has been bipartisan agreement that our 
troops need to be treated with the kind of respect they deserve. When 
they signed up for war, there wasn't a waiting line. When they come 
home and need medical care and they need mental health care, they need 
to get their education benefits, they shouldn't be waiting. It is this 
Democratic Congress that took on this issue and looked at the facts. 
Why are all of these men and women coming up to me out in Minnesota and 
saying they couldn't get health care? Look at the facts. The Pentagon 
underestimated the number of troops coming home from Iraq and 
Afghanistan by four times the amount--four times more returning troops 
needed health care than they estimated. We put billions of dollars into 
that.
  We are willing to rise to the occasion and say we are not going to 
make the same mistake we made after Vietnam. We are going to treat our 
troops with the respect they deserve when they come home. But again, 
when the administration made its plans for this war--a war I did not 
support from the beginning--when they made their plans, they did not 
anticipate the enormous costs.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a unanimous 
consent request?
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Yes.
  Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following 
the remarks of the Senator from Minnesota.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Menendez). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            ECONOMIC GROWTH

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, the administration did not anticipate 
the cost for our troops. The war has already cost over $490 billion, 
$1.5 trillion when you factor in all costs, $12 billion a month. They 
did not anticipate what was going on with this economy. They did not 
respond the way they were supposed to to the mortgage crisis. They did 
not anticipate. They listened to their friends in the special interest 
groups, and look where we are now. Look where we are now.
  Two weeks ago we passed a short-term stimulus package that will help 
change the economic direction of this country by putting money in the 
hands of American families, including our seniors and our veterans. 
This action was a start. But today we must begin focusing on the long-
term policies to spur economic growth long after the rebate checks are 
spent. We have to get this economy on the right track, and it means 
making a reckoning for that money that is spent in Iraq, to start 
bringing home some of our combat troops, to start being more 
responsible about this budget.
  Today we announced our next step, which is to look at this mortgage 
crisis, really the crisis that I say fundamentally puts us where we are 
right now. Mr. President, 8.8 million families across the United States 
are underwater. They owe more to lenders than they have equity in their 
home, giving them limited or no options for refinancing.
  The Foreclosure Prevention Act, which I am going to talk about later, 
and I hope will come to the floor this week, signifies a major step in 
the right direction, curbing the disastrous effect the foreclosure 
crisis has had on our families and our economy. The time to act is now.
  We also need long-term economic policies that will encourage 
sustainable economic growth in every corner of this country. From the 
impact of the mortgage crisis and the value of homes, to the 
skyrocketing cost of oil that fuels cars, trucks, and heats homes, to 
rising prices in the grocery stores, the middle class is being squeezed 
from every side.
  Back in January, I traveled around my State. I visited towns all the 
way from Worthington up to Halleck, MN. You haven't been anywhere, Mr. 
President, unless you visited Embarrass, MN, in the middle of January. 
It is always one of the coldest places in our country. We were all over 
our State. People are concerned. They are Minnesotans so they try to be 
optimistic, especially when it is January. They try to look to the 
future. They look at the potential with this energy revolution. But 
they would come out to cafes, come out to college campuses and talk 
about how it is getting harder and harder for them to send their kids 
to college, to afford health care, and to fill their cars up with gas.
  To give a sense of what we are looking at in our State--and our State 
has always had a diverse economy; we are eighth in the country for 
Fortune 500 companies--the unemployment rate for Minnesota recently 
jumped to 4.9 percent, up from 4.4 percent the month before. Our State 
has lost 23,000 jobs in the last 6 months alone. Home heating prices 
for Minnesota families have also risen by 14.1 percent per household in 
the past year alone.
  On the foreclosure front, the statistics in Minnesota are equally 
devastating. At the end of 2007, over 50,000 families in Minnesota were 
delinquent on their home payments. It is estimated that 30,000 will 
lose their homes in the next several years if something is not done.
  What are these families like? They are like the Gray family in 
Minnesota with whom I met. They are both teaching. They were all 
excited to buy their new house. They got a mortgage approved, a 
standard mortgage. It turned out the home values were much higher, and 
they were not able to afford a home. So they went to someone they 
thought they could trust and got one of these adjustable rate 
mortgages. They were told a lower rate at the beginning, $1,500, and it 
might go up a few hundred dollars. By 2008, it was up to $3,300 a month 
from $1,500 a month. We know that is not the rate of inflation. We know 
it is not the right thing to happen.
  I use that as one example of what we are seeing across this country 
and why this administration has its priorities messed up and why people 
such as the Grays, good people who are just trying to have a home for 
their family, have found themselves in the middle of this mess. It is 
where Wall Street has hit Main Street. It is where the Bush 
administration's priorities to spend $12 billion a month have hit 
people like the Grays right in their homes.
  The cost of foreclosures is not limited to these families. If 
something is not done, Minnesotans will lose an estimated $1.6 billion 
in declining home values. That is because the chickens have come home 
to roost. When it comes to this mortgage crisis, it is not just one 
family, one foreclosure. It affects real estate values on an entire 
street, an entire neighborhood, an entire community.
  We need an economy that creates stable middle-class jobs. We need 
infrastructure investments so we don't have bridges falling, as we did 
in our State,

[[Page 2540]]

right in the middle of America. We need energy investments that will 
reduce our dependency on foreign oil and create good ``green collar'' 
jobs in the growing clean alternative energy sector of our economy.
  The people we serve are asking for a new direction, a government that 
spends their money wisely, that represents their values, that works for 
American families. America wants a Washington that is going to offer 
new priorities and new solutions.
  Last year, our Congress succeeded in a downpayment on change. It was 
a beginning. We were hampered by procedural rules and all these 
filibusters, but we moved this country. There is so much more to do. We 
moved, first of all, to a more responsible budget process. We gave 
working Americans an increase in the minimum wage. We provided greater 
financial aid to help their kids go to college. And we passed a new 
energy bill that raises fuel efficiency standards for the first time 
since I was in junior high.
  But there is much more that needs to be done.
  Senator Dorgan and I heard about it at an economic hearing we had in 
my State just last week where we met with a panel of economists and 
experts on energy policy and what was going on in our economy in 
Minnesota. One economist described our current condition as ``serious, 
unstable, and declining.'' In our State, families sense their stability 
is slipping, with 67 percent of middle-class Americans having an 
increased sense of anxiety about their futures.
  Tom Stinson, Minnesota's chief economist, discussed the frightening 
unemployment statistics. We haven't added any new jobs over the past 
year, and we are not alone. States that have historically had lower 
unemployment rates are now creeping toward the national average.
  Unfortunately, when we look at this problem we are facing, and we 
know there are solutions, we know there is a way to get this economy 
back on track and be fiscally responsible, but President Bush's new 
budget proposal falls far short of what America needs to address our 
economic downturn and invest in meaningful recovery effort.
  This new budget request does not offer new priorities or now 
solutions. Instead, this budget continues a familiar pattern of 
misplaced priorities. It continues a 7-year pattern of fiscal 
irresponsibility: borrowing money and leaving an ever-larger debt to 
our children and grandchildren.
  Look at this, the wall of debt we have seen and how quickly it has 
risen from 2001 to 2013. This administration took a $200 billion 
surplus and turned it into a $300 billion budget deficit. Do you know 
what it means to middle-class families? When I talk to people in our 
States about what all these millions and billions and trillions mean, 
it means that 1 out of 12 Federal tax dollars goes to pay interest on 
that debt. That money is not going to the United States. Most of that 
money is going to companies in foreign countries. That is what is 
happening to this country.
  I was listening before to my colleague from Oklahoma talking about 
how we have to be willing to make these sacrifices and pay for things. 
I find this so ironic because it is people on our side of the aisle who 
have been willing to talk about rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts 
on people making over $200,000. Think how that money can go to pay off 
this debt, to go into infrastructure investment we have been talking 
about, to move this economy in the right direction. It is people over 
on our side of the aisle who have been talking about oil giveaways and 
putting them into renewable energies so we can start investing in 
farmers and workers in the Midwest instead of oil cartels in the 
Mideast.
  How about the debate we had on the middle-class tax issue, on AMT tax 
relief? We were willing to talk about how we wanted to pay for it. We 
wanted to pay for it off those hedge fund operators, but they wouldn't 
go for it. It is this Congress that put the pay-as-you-go back.
  When I talk to people in my State, they understand we need to have a 
short-term stimulus package, why we need it, and why economists 
believed it was a good idea. But when we go forward in the long term, 
we cannot keep going the way we are going with this wall of debt. We 
are not going to end up where we want to go. We are going to be right 
back where we were before we put the stimulus in place, and we need to 
make bold changes in this country.
  In just 7 years, this administration took that budget surplus, $158 
billion--think of that money--and made it into a $400 billion deficit. 
So when we talk about this war in Iraq and when my esteemed colleague 
from South Carolina talks about it being priceless, it is not 
priceless. It is $12 billion a month.
  Meanwhile, this new budget continues to neglect crucial investments 
that are needed to strengthen our economy and our Nation for the long 
term. It does not make the investments we need in our Nation's 
transportation infrastructure. It does not make the investments we need 
in developing renewable energy sources to move us toward greater energy 
independence and security. It does not make the investments we need to 
support the basic medical and scientific research that has always been 
a key driver of our country's innovation and growth.
  I come from Minnesota, a State where we believe in science. We 
brought the world everything from the Post-It note to the pacemaker, 
and we believe this investment pays off not only in the health of our 
citizens but also for jobs and looking to the future and not letting 
other countries such as India, China, and other countries go ahead of 
us because we have failed in this country to have an investment 
strategy and put those Government policies in place that drives that 
investment.
  Here are a few examples from my State of where the President's budget 
goes wrong.
  Americans are struggling to lower home heating costs in any way they 
can. Nationwide, the average household is expected to pay 11 percent 
more for heating this winter compared to last year. Families who rely 
on home heating oil are facing record prices, 30 to 50 percent above 
last winter.
  So what does the administration do in its budget? It cuts this 
funding. It ends the Department of Energy Weatherization Assistance 
Program. The Weatherization Assistance Program increases the energy 
efficiency of homes occupied by low-income Americans, directly reducing 
their energy costs. It cut it by 100 percent.
  The funds appropriated in fiscal year 2008 for this program will 
enable upgrades for as many as 85,000 homes. With energy costs rising 
significantly and an economy poised on the brink of recession, the 
weatherization program and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance 
Program are necessities, they are not luxuries.
  Another example: Nearly 6\1/2\ years after the terrorist attacks of 
September 11, Americans are well aware of the need for State and local 
governments to be prepared as possible against future threats. I heard 
you talking, Mr. President, earlier this afternoon about the importance 
of putting that money into our own homeland security. So what does the 
administration do with this budget? It slashes funding for State and 
local first responders' efforts, cutting firefighter assistance grants 
from $1.2 billion to $300 million, and the State Homeland Security 
Grant Program from over $1 billion to $200 million, and, once again, it 
proposes to eliminate the cost of the COPS Program.
  As a former prosecutor, I take this personally because I saw how that 
COPS Program worked, how it added police officers to our neighborhoods, 
how it brought down crime. Look at this: What is the comparison when we 
are looking at this budget as we are talking about priorities of the 
$12 billion a month on the war in Iraq? This is the amount the 
President would need to add to his budget to maintain this police 
program which puts police out in the neighborhoods at a 2008 level, 
plus inflation.
  Personally, I would like to do more, especially in our rural areas. I 
think we need meth cops out there. Just to restore it to 2008 levels 
plus inflation would cost $596 million. What would

[[Page 2541]]

you do if you just roll back the tax cuts for those making over $1 
million in 2009? I am not talking about people making over $250,000; I 
am talking about people making over $1 million. What would you bring in 
with that? You would bring in $51 billion. Look at the comparison. 
Think about how many police you could buy on the streets. Think how 
much you could buy to help people afford their homes. Think of the 
benefits. Look at what you can do for $51 billion to help our veterans.
  We have soldiers coming home from Iraq that just this summer in 
Minnesota were told: You are the longest serving unit, you Red Bulls 
from Minnesota, of the National Guard in Iraq. But guess what. Your 
paper only says 729 days. So guess what. You are not going to get your 
full education benefits, even though you served longer than 729 days.
  Obviously, we took up this matter with General Shellito, head of our 
National Guard, took up this matter with the Army, and it is working to 
fix it. Oh, well, it saved some money to write that down as 729 days. 
But think about $51 billion and what we could do with that. We are 
talking about priorities here.
  Fiscal responsibility is also about making sure down the line that 
these priorities are right. Do we want a budget that offers tax 
giveaways to the wealthiest or a budget that provides relief to middle-
class families squeezed by rising costs for health care, housing, 
energy, college tuition, childcare and care for aging parents?
  Do we want a budget that gives lucrative special favors to the giant 
oil and pharmaceutical companies, or a budget that invests in our 
future prosperity, such as research and development on renewable 
energy?
  Do we want a budget that continues to spend $12 billion a month in 
Iraq or a budget that provides our veterans with the help they need; 
that makes sure we have the money we need to keep our troops there for 
the focused purpose of guarding our embassy and training police and 
having them there for special forces; and money for the COPS program--
that $596 million it would cost to restore that? That is about homeland 
security.
  I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility 
by reversing or rolling back these tax cuts for the wealthiest 
Americans--people making over $200,000.
  I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility 
by eliminating offshore tax havens for multimillionaires so people 
aren't hiding money in the Cayman Islands.
  I want an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility by 
ending the tax breaks and giveaways that have been handed out year 
after year to the big oil companies.
  I want to see an administration that aims for fiscal responsibility 
by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prices for prescription 
drugs for our seniors.
  The President's budget does not provide the new priorities and the 
new solutions America needs. Instead, it continues to take us down the 
wrong path. This budget is only the most recent example of an 
administration that is putting its head in the sand and ignoring the 
reality of the looming economic recession.
  As the housing market is crumbling, and millions of families are 
expected to lose their homes in the next couple of years, the 
administration seems to hope this problem will go away. This is why I 
have cosponsored the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Act, and I am 
committed to working with my Senate colleagues on a bipartisan basis to 
pass this bill to help keep our families in their homes and get the 
middle class back on their feet. Across the country, we are seeing 
families struggling to keep their homes. If something isn't done, over 
2 million families will lose that struggle in the next 2 years.
  Through a pilot project conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank in 
Minneapolis, we have been able to track by ZIP Code all of the 
outstanding subprime mortgages in our State. This data is a startling 
reminder that we are seeing only the beginning of this crisis if we 
don't do anything about it. By being able to track the reset dates of 
all the subprime mortgages in Minnesota, the study shows thousands of 
mortgages resetting to higher interest rates monthly, causing more and 
more families to fall behind on their payments. Congress must act 
quickly if we are going to curb any effects of the housing crisis.
  In my home county, where I was chief prosecutor of Hennepin County, 
we have seen an 82-percent increase in sheriff sales of foreclosed 
homes. The problem extends to greater Minnesota. We have seen the 
foreclosures double in some of our urban areas. We have seen 3 out of 
100 households--3 out of 100 households--that are in foreclosure.
  Something must be done to help these families. I have met them. These 
are not just statistics and numbers; these are real families living in 
the State of Minnesota. This is why I believe we need to pass the 
Foreclosure Prevention Act and why I believe we need to reprioritize 
what is happening in this country--$12 billion a month in Iraq, with no 
end in sight, and some people saying we are going to stay there for 100 
years, while these families are losing their homes, while our veterans 
are still not getting a fair shake.
  This bill, the Foreclosure Prevention Act, would give $200 million to 
families to counsel them in ways to avoid foreclosure. I will put that 
chart up again showing an example of these priorities. This is for 
people making over $1 million a year--people making over $1 million a 
year. Here is our $51 billion. Think of this mortgage counseling. It is 
a proven way to work here. It would be only $200 million.
  Our State finance agencies are in a perfect position to help families 
refinance loans, but their hands have been tied by ceilings on the 
amount of State-backed mortgage bonds they can use. This bill makes it 
easier for them to help find families and rework their mortgages. That 
is what we are trying to do. It will not work for every one of these 
people. Some we don't want to help. They are not deserving of this. 
They maybe speculated on these mortgages to begin with. But many of 
these families I have personally met, including the family from Ohio we 
saw today here in the Senate. These are hard-working families who were 
maybe not told the truth about their mortgage or misled about their 
mortgage or the whole mortgage was set up to get them in trouble down 
the line, and the mortgage lender goes away and sells it to someone 
else, who sells it to someone else, who sells it to someone else, and 
pretty soon it doesn't just hurt that family, it hurts the entire 
street, and it hurts the entire neighborhood.
  This is about getting our priorities right. Yes, it is about the war 
in Iraq and an administration that refused to account for the cost, 
refused to have a plan to start bringing our troops home, that refuses 
to admit we are in financial straits--financial straits they got us 
into. Because we must remember, when they came in, we had $200 billion 
surpluses, and now we are where we are with this wall of Federal debt.
  The American people are tired of this. They want a fair accounting of 
what is going on in this country. They want a fair accounting of this 
war and a plan to bring our troops home. That is the best thing we can 
do for our troops, and that is the best thing we can do for our 
country.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have been listening to the discussion 
this afternoon, which is a repeat of a discussion we have heard often 
in this Chamber: Who supports our troops; who waves the white flag of 
surrender. You know, in the discussion in this Chamber and out on the 
Presidential trail, we hear all of those terms, and who is willing to 
stick with it and defeat the terrorists with respect to the war on 
terror.
  Well, let me, if I might, suggest there is a smart way and a tough 
way to deal with terrorists, and we are not doing it very effectively, 
in my judgment. I want to review for a moment, because we have people 
coming to the floor who forget to review where we are, and where we 
have been, especially.

[[Page 2542]]

  In 2001, on September 11, terrorists attacked our country. Following 
the attack that killed thousands of innocent Americans--the World Trade 
Center, the Pentagon, and a farm field in Pennsylvania--following that 
attack, Osama bin Laden and the leadership of al-Qaida boasted that 
they engineered the attack against the American people. They boasted 
they engineered the attack against the American people. So the 
President says: We are going to have an effort to bring to justice the 
terrorists.
  Well, it is now 2008. That was 2001. In 2008, our National 
Intelligence Estimate, released about 4 months ago, said the greatest 
terrorist threat to our country, to our homeland, is the al-Qaida 
organization and its leadership, who are now plotting additional 
attacks against our country. Our National Intelligence Estimate says 
the greatest terrorist threat to our country, 7 years after 9/11, is 
the al-Qaida leadership, because they are planning new attacks. They 
have reconstituted in a safe and secure hideaway in northern Pakistan. 
Those are the words of our National Intelligence Estimate, not my 
words--safe, secure. Iraq leadership, Osama bin Laden, still alive 7 
years later and creating new training camps, training new terrorists.
  So how effective has the war on terror been when the greatest 
terrorist threat to our country 7 years after the 9/11 attack, the 
greatest terrorist threat is now building and reconstituting in 
northern Pakistan? It is reasonable to ask the question: Who took their 
eye off the ball? Why has this country, why has our policy not been a 
policy to bring to justice Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida leadership? 
Instead, 7 years later, we are mired down in a war in Iraq, we have 
spent nearly two-thirds of $1 trillion dollars, thousands of American 
soldiers have died, and we have people asking us about who waves the 
white flag of surrender and who supports our soldiers. That is 
unbelievable to me.
  Let me review a bit. Following 9/11, we had top secret briefings for 
Senators and Congressmen--top secret briefings conducted by the head of 
the CIA. The Vice President was involved, the head of the National 
Security Agency, Condoleezza Rice, was involved. We went to those top 
secret briefings. All of us did. We were told things in top secret, 
shown classified materials, about what was happening in Iraq. It turns 
out that was a foundation for the invasion of Iraq. In fact, it was 
presented at the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell. It 
turns out most of it was false; wrong on its face.
  Let me review it for a moment--the issue of mobile chemical weapons 
laboratories in Iraq that threatens our country. Mobile chemical 
weapons laboratories in Iraq. You know where that came from? We now 
know it came from a single source, through our intelligence 
organizations to the American people, to Congress, in top secret 
briefings, to the world at the United Nations, a single source: A 
fellow who used to drive a taxicab in Baghdad nicknamed ``Curveball'' 
and widely considered by German authorities as a drunk and a 
fabricator.
  A single source named Curveball gave this administration the ability 
to, in top secret briefings, tell us that Iraq had mobile chemical 
weapons laboratories and gave then-Secretary of State Colin Powell the 
opportunity to tell the world that Iraq had mobile chemical weapons 
laboratories. Turns out it wasn't true.
  Will Rogers once said:

       It is not what he says he knows that bothers me, it's what 
     he says he knows for sure that just ain't so.

  Curveball. One single source this administration used to tell us that 
mobile chemical weapons laboratories in Iraq threatened this country, 
and it turns out to have been false, and they should have known it. And 
some may have known it, as it was described to us.
  The aluminum tubes. The aluminum tubes for the reconstitution of a 
nuclear capability in Iraq. Now, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, 
then National Security Adviser, even used the term the specter or the 
threat of a nuclear--or I guess she said mushroom cloud on television. 
The mushroom cloud. Well, it turns out her office had the information 
that a substantial portion of the Government didn't believe the nuclear 
tubes that were ordered by the Iraqis were for the purpose of 
reconstituting a nuclear capability. Most of that was discredited. The 
information in the National Security Adviser's office existed to say 
that there were very qualified people in this Government who didn't 
believe that.
  It turns out none of that was true. The aluminum tube issue was not 
true. Those who were telling the world, and in top secret briefings 
telling Members of Congress about the threat of the nuclear tubes for 
the reconstitution of nuclear capability, had information in their 
possession and knew better.
  Yellowcake from Niger is another big deal that made it into the 
President's address to the Congress in the State of the Union. It turns 
out that was based on falsified documents. It is unbelievable.
  Maybe we should review the facts a bit. All of this information turns 
out to have been false--the information that represented the foundation 
on which the administration made the case about the need to invade 
Iraq. Well, this country invaded Iraq and had no plans, once the 
invasion was complete and the military takeover was complete, on how to 
deal with Iraq at that point, and it turned into a civil war.
  Saddam Hussein, following that invasion, was captured and executed. 
He was hung by his neck until dead. He doesn't exist anymore. The Iraqi 
people then voted for a new constitution, and then the Iraqi people 
voted to constitute a new government.
  So Saddam Hussein was killed, executed, a brutal dictator was 
executed by the Iraqi people. They got a new Constitution, they got a 
new Government, and then this country, in the context of spending 
almost two-thirds of a trillion dollars, this country spent $16 billion 
training 350,000 able-bodied Iraqis to be policemen and firefighters 
and safety personnel and soldiers. We trained an array of people in 
Iraq for security; $16 billion training 350,000 Iraqis, principally for 
security, police, and soldier duty.
  Now, if the able-bodied people in Iraq who have been trained by this 
country are not willing and cannot and will not provide security in 
their country, our soldiers cannot stay there forever and do it. We 
cannot.
  It is interesting to me, and very disappointing to me, that the 
President decided: We are going to invade Iraq, but we are not going to 
pay for it. Every single penny we are going to borrow.
  So we are going to send soldiers to Iraq and send the bill to the 
debt. When the soldiers come back, they can pay the debt.
  As I said earlier, it is two-thirds of a trillion dollars now in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, all of it emergency, none of it paid for. In my 
judgment, that is exactly the wrong thing to have done. We should have 
been saying: Yes, we will ask soldiers to sacrifice. If that is what we 
ask our soldiers to do, we will ask the American people to reach a 
similar sacrifice. But this President would not do that.
  So we come now to a position where we have been in Iraq longer than 
we were engaged in the Second World War and we have folks who come to 
the Senate Chamber and we have folks out on the campaign trail saying: 
Who is going to wave the white flag of surrender?
  Some say we are going to stay in Iraq forever, 100 years. Others look 
at a Taj Mahal that has been built in Iraq, nearly $800 million for an 
embassy in Iraq, the largest embassy in the world by far, and they 
think they know, as a result of that, how long some intend for us to 
stay in Iraq.
  But we cannot do that. Let me mention one other addition. On top of 
all the things I have described--basically the false foundation of 
information on which this country made a decision to go to war--on top 
of all that, with this money we have spent, there has been the greatest 
amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country and 
nobody seems to care very much.

[[Page 2543]]

  Let me tell a couple stories: $85,000 trucks on the side of the road 
in Iraq, because they had a flat tire and no wrench to fix it, so they 
torched it, burned it. It does not matter, the American taxpayer is 
paying for it because big companies got sweetheart, no-bid, cost-plus 
contracts. Got a flat tire, torch the truck. Got a plugged fuel pump, 
it does not matter, torch the truck.
  I mean, the stories are unbelievable. You got two builders to provide 
ice. The Haliburton Company is going to select between two bidders to 
provide ice. One is seven times more than the other bid. Well, pick the 
contract that costs seven times more than the other because the 
taxpayer is picking up the tab.
  They buy little hand towels for the troops, because Haliburton has to 
do that. Well, they do not want to buy ordinary hand towels for the 
troops, they want their logo embroidered on the hand towels, KBR, the 
subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root. Well, that is going to increase the 
cost of the hand towels triple, quadruple. It does not matter; the 
taxpayer is going to pay the bill.
  Do you want to know where there are 50,000 pounds of nails, 25 tons 
of nails? They are on the sands in Iraq. They ordered them. They were 
too short. What do you do with 50,000 pounds of nails that are too 
short? You throw them away because the taxpayer is going to pick it up. 
You just order the right size.
  This is the most unbelievable story that is yet to be told about the 
greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country. There 
is a lot to talk about.
  We are going to have a hearing in the Senate Appropriations 
Committee. I have held 12 hearings in the policy committee on these 
issues. We are going to hold more. I have to run to a meeting. But I 
did want to come and talk a bit. I did not have the opportunity to 
describe who is it that is supporting America's soldiers and what is it 
that does support our fighting men and women? We send them off to war.
  There is going to be a Medal of Honor, by the way, awarded next 
Monday at 2:30 in the White House to a man who died 26 years ago, a 
Sioux Indian named Woody Keeble. I hope perhaps to come over tomorrow 
and tell the story of Woody Keeble. There are soldiers who have given 
so much for this country.
  Woody Keeble had 85 pieces of lead in his body when he finished what 
he did. He was still alive.
  But these folks then go to war and do what they do and come back 
home. And then the question is: Who stands up for our soldiers? Who 
stands up for our veterans? Who is willing to stand here and say we 
will keep our promise for veterans health care? Who does that?
  There is a lot to say. I regret I have a commitment that I have to be 
at in the majority leader's office, but I would like tomorrow to come 
back and speak at greater length about a remarkable American who on 
Monday will be recognized by President Bush, a North Dakotan from 
Wahpeton, ND, Standing Rock, the Wahpeton-Sisseton Sioux Tribe. He will 
be recognized as the first Sioux Indian in this country's history to 
receive the Medal of Honor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to make a few brief 
comments in response to my eloquent colleague from North Dakota. The 
rhetoric he utilizes has been used for a long time.
  We have heard this rhetoric before each one of our evaluations of the 
way ahead in Iraq. And we have each time concluded that our national 
interests call on us to remain active and strong in Iraq and active and 
strong against terrorism around the world.
  I would note, to remind everyone, every intelligence agency in the 
world thought weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq when the war 
began. In fact, Saddam Hussein did not seriously deny that these 
weapons existed. Saddam denied the U.N. inspectors the right to look 
for WMD, even though he had agreed to do so after suing for peace in 
1991. At that time, after he had invaded Kuwait, we agreed not to take 
Baghdad and grab him by the scruff of the neck. He agreed he would 
allow his country to be inspected by the United Nations.
  He did not do that. He systematically violated 13 U.N. resolutions. 
As the well-known magazine, The Economist, said: We either have to give 
up and let Saddam break the embargo or we have to fight? They said: We 
believe we should fight.
  That, I suggest, is the fundamental reason we had to authorize the 
President to use force. A lot more can be said about it, but those were 
some of the things we were considering at the time. I would note also 
that an official commission report concluded that, while U.S. forces 
did not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein 
planned to work his way out from under the sanctions and to 
reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction.
  That has been clearly established. Most of us were surprised we did 
not find nuclear or chemical weapons in Iraq. I have to tell you, I was 
surprised. In 1991, when we had the first Gulf War to repulse Iraq, 
which had invaded Kuwait, we discovered that Iraq's nuclear program was 
far more advanced than we had previously thought. That is indisputable.
  We know that after 1991, and before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam 
had utilized weapons of mass destruction, poison gas, against the Kurds 
of Iraq, killing thousands of his own people. How could he not have 
weapons of mass destruction? It still remains baffling to me that we 
did not find them.
  So I wish to rebut this old rhetoric that somehow President Bush lied 
to get us into the war. We spent months discussing this and debating 
all the issues. We had private briefings. We knew basically everything 
the President knew. And what we knew was the CIA Director George Tenet, 
who had been appointed by President Clinton, told the President of the 
United States: It was a slam dunk; that weapons of mass destruction 
existed in Iraq.
  That is the kind of information that the President acted on. He was 
not lying to the American people. This Senate authorized the President 
to use force in Iraq by a more than three-fourths majority vote. A 
majority of both parties, a majority of the Democratic Senators, a 
majority of the Republican Senators voted to authorize the President to 
use force in Iraq. And that is how we got here.
  So the question is: What do we do now? This is a great Nation. We are 
not some fly-by-night bunch who can change our minds every time the 
poll numbers change. We have responsibilities to our Nation, to our 
allies. We have committed our men and women to harm's way. We have lost 
a large number of American soldiers to execute a policy we sent them to 
execute.
  I have to tell you, we lost far fewer in the initial invasion than I 
imagined, but have lost far more than I imagined in the post-invasion 
period. Things are never quite certain in war, however.
  People who fight you and desire to kill you usually do not want to be 
killed themselves. Military action is a tough thing and always causes 
us to remember we should avoid it whenever we possibly can. It should 
be a last resort. It is only acceptable when we have no real other 
alternative.
  I do not believe the Lord is happy when his children fight and kill 
one another. It cannot be a good thing. It is a bad thing. Sometimes, 
because we are so flawed and we have options that are so grim, military 
action becomes the best decision that can be made under the 
circumstances. I think that is where we were in 2003 when it came to 
the Iraq debate.
  In the fall of 2006, in an election that came during one of the worst 
periods of time in Iraq, the Republicans lost control of both Houses of 
Congress. The President's polling numbers were terrible. The following 
summer we had a national debate about whether to allow General Petraeus 
to continue the surge. We had a commission that General Jones headed, 
with 15 members. I asked him at the hearing: General Jones, do you and 
the members of your commission believe we have a chance

[[Page 2544]]

to be successful if we execute this surge? He said: I do. He looked 
around. Any of the other members want to rebut what I have said or have 
a different opinion? Not a single one did.
  That commission unanimously reported that they thought we could be 
successful. We had General Petraeus testify, and we had the GAO issue a 
report in September after the surge had actually begun.
  We noticed some progress. But it was premature to see that as a 
sustained trend. We knew that. And we continued again at that time to 
allow the surge to go forward. We believed things were going to get 
better. That was my conclusion after hearing everyone's opinion.
  I remember asking General Petraeus: Sir, will you tell us the truth, 
the good and bad? And he committed in private and in public to do that.
  Will you give us your best judgment? Will you let us know if you 
think this is not an acceptable, feasible action in Iraq; that we need 
to acknowledge that we can't be successful? He made that commitment.
  So what has happened since? We sent five additional brigades into 
Iraq as part of the surge. Three have already returned to the United 
States. The other two are planned to be returned by summer. We will be 
at or possibly below the 15 combat brigades that we had in Iraq before 
the surge.
  General Casey was asked today in the Armed Services Committee about 
that plan and whether it meant we could move from having our soldiers 
on 15-month deployments to 12 month deployments. He said: When we get 
back to 15 brigades--and at this time we are projected to be there by 
July--he believed then that we could go back to a 1-year rotation 
instead of the longer 15-month rotation. 15 month rotations have been 
so painful to our military personnel and their families. That is a long 
time. We need to keep it to 12 months if we possibly can.
  We are anticipating three reports in April. General Petraeus will 
come, as he promised, to give us a report on the status of Iraq and 
what he thinks about our future military commitment and soldier 
strength there. We will also receive a report from the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff and a report from Admiral Fallon, the CENTCOM commander who has 
Iraq the rest of the Middle East under his command. We will have those 
three reports in April. That is the time for us to begin to evaluate 
again what our next step will be.
  General Petraeus has said that we need to be careful to consolidate 
the gains we have made, to help the Iraqi people and government move to 
a more stable footing for the long term. If we were to pass the 
Feingold legislation, it would be a slap in the face to our commander 
on the ground who is absolutely one of the finest generals this Nation 
has ever produced. It would be unthinkable that we would, in a time of 
great success, reject the commander's recommendations and the 
military's recommendations after we took their recommendations when 
things were not good a year ago. We were worried a year ago. There was 
cause for legitimate concern. I do not deny it. But, goodness sakes, we 
have had some success in recent months.
  The military estimates that attacks against coalition forces and 
Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians have collectively fallen by 60 percent 
against Iraq since June of last year. Iraqi Army estimates put the 
number as high as an 80-percent reduction. In June there were almost 
1,700 IED explosions across Iraq. That number fell to 600 in December. 
While one U.S. combat death is so serious that we are not able to 
articulate the gravity of it, we are seeing, I am pleased to say, a 
major reduction in casualties among our troops and Iraqi troops. It is 
quite remarkable. December of 2007 was the second lowest combat death 
total of the war for American forces behind May of 2003. January and 
February of this year have shown comparably low death rates. That is 
something for which we can be thankful. Every single life is important. 
But we have to understand that when we commit troops to combat, there 
are going to be casualties. Having a good movement in the right 
direction is a cause for confidence, not a basis to cut and run.
  From January to December of 2007, sectarian attacks and death among 
Iraqis in the Baghdad area decreased by 90 percent. I want to just say, 
we should be skeptical of these numbers when we hear them just one 
time. Are the trends sustained? How accurate are these facts? Those are 
legitimate questions for members of Congress to ask.
  When I see soldiers in the Atlanta airport--most of them are on their 
R&R or coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan--I speak to them about 
their experiences. I spend a lot of time in the Atlanta airport, more 
than I like. I ask them how things are going. And I am hearing, from 
them, information that directly confirms the reports we are getting.
  Just this month, a soldier I met was saying he worked at a base in 
Iraq. He said they used to take incoming rounds against the base 
throughout the day every day. Now they go days without any attacks. 
Another soldier told me things were getting boring. Every morning they 
used to meet. There would be some emergency, some serious challenge 
they had to address. Now when they meet, they can go weeks without 
anything serious happening. These observations are from sergeants, 
enlisted people, junior officers. It confirms, I will just say to you, 
the information we are receiving.
  How has this success happened? What has occurred? The ranks of Sunni 
volunteers who have chosen in recent months to switch sides and turn 
against al-Qaida as members of local citizen councils have grown to 
more than 91,000, according to statistics from the U.S. military. The 
Sunnis, who are the minority group in Iraq, used to run Iraq under 
Saddam Hussein. They have been taken from power. They were strong 
Baathists. They were attracted to al-Qaida and their false promises. 
Many, though not most, were in cahoots with al-Qaida. They have now 
rejected al-Qaida. Whole tribal regions have publicly renounced them. 
They said they don't care about their people. They try to run their 
neighborhoods. They are corrupt. They don't support them. And 91,000 
have joined local citizens councils part of the awakening, they call 
it, to turn against al-Qaida.
  Sunnis are turning these guys in. Most al-Qaida are foreigners. They 
don't live in Iraq. So the Sunnis know who they are. The Sunni folks 
know them. Once they turned on al-Qaida, we have seen a dramatic change 
in the Sunni areas.
  Shia groups, citizens councils are growing around the country as 
well. More and more the people are getting tired of murderous killers 
and religiously driven extremists. They realize this is no foundation 
on which to build their future. Three critical laws have been passed. 
Critics say: We have to have laws passed. Surely we do, although the 
President and all the masters of the universe in America, I guess, 
determined that we would pass an immigration law. They said we had to 
do it. We had to have this program, this amnesty. They were going to 
ram it right through here. It failed flatter than a fritter. So just 
saying a bill needs to be passed in a democratic parliamentary 
situation doesn't mean that is so easy to be done.
  Three critical laws were passed by the Iraqi Parliament on February 
13 of this year. They enacted a $48 billion budget for 2008. They 
granted amnesty to thousands of Sunni detainees and passed a provincial 
power law defining the relationship between the central government and 
provinces. These last two were on the list of benchmarks demanded by 
Congress.
  Last fall when General Petraeus was here, the critics of the war 
said: You are not meeting these benchmarks. We are not interested in 
the military side. We are only interested in the political side. Well, 
we are making some progress now in the political area. In one sense 
things are even better than they appear on the political side because, 
throughout the region, reconciliation has been undertaken, and 
Baathists have been accepted back into Government positions, even in 
the absence of a national law. The oil money was and is being fairly 
distributed, even though they haven't agreed on an

[[Page 2545]]

absolute firm legal formula for distribution of revenues.
  Last Friday, February 22, the Shiite cleric, Moqtada al Sadr, who 
controls the Mahdi army, instructed his followers to extend their 
cease-fire against the Sunnis and the Americans for another 6 months. 
This is a big deal. The Sunnis have come around and now al Sadr, with 
the Shia, has also recommended that his followers continue their cease-
fire.
  U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, with whom I have met in Iraq, 
said this last week:

       We are indeed seeing the signs of that political surge. 
     Putting all of that together would have been just unthinkable 
     6 months ago.

  Let me say this Feingold bill would be disastrous if it were passed. 
It would cut off funding after 120 days for any missions not approved 
by Senator Feingold and politicians in Washington. It would replace the 
deployment decisions and recommendations of General Petraeus with 
political decisions. Some, I guess, who are in the moveon.org camp 
think General Petraeus is a betrayer. That is what they put in an ad in 
the paper last year. I say he is one of the best generals we have had. 
He has had a remarkable tenure of success in Iraq.
  The Feingold bill would forbid us from training any members of 
neighborhood councils that have sprung up under the Sunni awakening, 
unless we could certify that they had never been involved in sectarian 
violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces. Well, we want them 
on our side. I don't know what motivated them at one point or another 
to oppose the United States. But if they have made a decision, as a lot 
of Sunnis clearly have, to switch sides, to turn in al-Qaida, to kill 
al-Qaida, isn't that good enough? Why shouldn't we welcome them back 
into the fold of the Iraqi Government and give them a chance?
  We have to be careful. In fact, I think the State Department and the 
military are too naive in their belief that the prisoners we now have 
in custody can be released in the interests of reconciliation. Many of 
these, I am afraid, are just killers and murderers and thugs. Releasing 
too many of these people can create violence in the community. I don't 
doubt that some have had a change of heart because many have. But we 
have to be careful about how many of these prisoners we release.
  This bill would prevent us from attacking terrorists or sectarian 
militias unless we can be sure that the targets are ``members of al 
Qaeda and affiliated international terrorist organizations.''
  How is this supposed to work in practice, let me ask? Will we ask al-
Qaida to wear special hats or badges or uniforms so we can distinguish 
them from simple local terrorists?
  The likely consequences of this legislation would be renewed 
sectarian violence, expanded ``breathing room'' for al-Qaida and other 
terrorist groups, and decreased possibilities for political 
reconciliation. It would create major political instability in Iraq.
  The frequently referenced final report of the Iraq Study Group 
described, in grim detail, the results of an American decision to 
abandon Iraq:

       Because of the importance of Iraq, the potential for 
     catastrophe, and the role and commitments of the United 
     States in initiating events that have led to the current 
     situation, we believe it would be wrong for the United States 
     to abandon the country through a precipitous withdrawal of 
     troops and support. A premature American departure from Iraq 
     would almost certainly produce greater sectarian violence and 
     further deterioration of conditions, leading to a number of 
     the adverse consequences outlined above. The near-term 
     results would be a significant power vacuum, greater human 
     suffering, regional destabilization, and a threat to the 
     global economy. Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a 
     historic victory.
       If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range 
     consequences could eventually require the United States to 
     return.

  This was a serious evaluation by serious men and women who have 
studied this area in depth. I do not think anybody can deny that this 
is a realistic description of what would occur if we were to pass the 
Feingold bill.
  Well, Mr. President, I see others here who want to talk, and it looks 
as though we will have more time tomorrow. I say to my fine colleague 
from Florida, I enjoy serving with him, as he is chairman of our 
Strategic Subcommittee in Armed Services.
  I conclude by saying, we are a great nation. We made some tough 
decisions. We went through a full debate last summer. We decided to 
give General Petraeus a chance. We gave him a chance. We supported the 
surge in a bipartisan vote. We sent the money. We sent him the 
resources to carry out the surge. It has been successful beyond 
anything we could have imagined at the time. And now, to undertake a 
precipitous withdrawal, directly contrary to his opinion as to what 
should be done to help continue to secure Iraq, would be unthinkable. 
No great nation should flip-flop around like that, certainly not the 
United States of America.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to make sure I have in 
the Record why I had opposed the motion to invoke cloture on the motion 
to proceed to the Feingold bill, S. 2633.
  This Senator is certainly for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq. But the 
Feingold bill has a considerable pitfall because it starts the 
withdrawal within a certain period of time and cuts off the funding 
with the exception of allowing funding, for example--I am going to 
read--for ``Conducting targeted operations, limited in duration and 
scope, against members of al Qaeda and affiliated international 
terrorist organizations.''
  In other words, the Feingold bill would allow funding to continue to 
conduct operations against al-Qaida, but only ``limited in duration and 
scope.'' I do not think we ought to limit the ability of the U.S. 
Government to go after al-Qaida in Iraq.
  Furthermore, this clause in the Feingold bill would allow funding to 
go not only against al-Qaida, ``limited in duration and scope,'' but 
also against ``affiliated international terrorist organizations.'' The 
word ``affiliated'' means affiliated to al-Qaida.
  There are a bunch of other terrorist organizations in the world we 
want to go after, and this limitation of funding would be only for 
those affiliated with al-Qaida. I do not want the Government of the 
United States limited in its ability to go after al-Qaida and then only 
those other terrorist organizations affiliated with al-Qaida.
  I have voted against the motion to invoke cloture. There seemed to be 
only about a dozen of us who voted against that motion to invoke 
cloture. As we proceed, I will certainly, if we get to the bill, try to 
amend that portion; otherwise, I will certainly be constrained to have 
to vote against this bill.
  Mr. President, I have another matter I will bring up at another time. 
I will let the debate proceed on this Feingold bill, so I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it is suggested we should not be 
discussing Iraq. Well, the last time I checked, the majority leader 
sets the agenda. The majority leader brought up Iraq, and if he wants 
to bring up Iraq, we can discuss Iraq.
  I too am wondering why it is being brought up because we have other 
important issues we could be dealing with. For example, I wish to see 
the Congress turn its attention to a pro-growth economic package, a 
discussion of how we can help this economy move. I think once we have 
that opportunity to debate, we will have a good, principled exchange of 
ideas here.
  My suspicion is that from the other side of the aisle we will hear a 
number of expensive spending proposals, and from our side of the aisle 
we will hear a different agenda, an agenda that says we want a bigger, 
bolder, broader pro-growth economic agenda so we can move this economy 
in a more positive direction.
  Part of that would have to do with lower tax rates for individuals, 
such as to permanently reduce the dividend, capital gains, and estate 
tax rates to 15 percent. Part of it would be to lower corporate tax 
rates, reducing the capital gains tax for corporations from 35

[[Page 2546]]

percent to 25 percent so our companies in America can compete in the 
world. Part of it would be indexing the capital gains tax for inflation 
so that double taxation of capital would at least reflect inflation. 
Part of it would be something that many Members of this Chamber have 
talked about for a long time: a simpler, flatter tax, giving taxpayers 
the option of filing a 1-page return with a 17-percent flat tax rate.
  I wish to see--and I plan to introduce within the next few days--
legislation that would make permanent the expensing provisions for 
small business that we passed in a bipartisan way before the recess in 
the pro-growth package to help stimulate the economy. Those provisions 
increased the small business expensing limits and allowed a 50 percent 
bonus depreciation.
  Now it is not unusual to hear Republicans talking about lower tax 
rates. But that is only a part of--a part of--what we would propose if 
our debate were here for a pro-growth economic package. I wish to see 
us bring up Senator Isakson's proposal, which would create a $5,000-a-
year, 3-year tax credit for buyers of foreclosed or new homes to get 
buyers back in the marketplace.
  I wish to see us begin to more seriously implement the America 
COMPETES Act. That is part of a pro-growth agenda as well. We worked 
hard in this Chamber across party lines for 2 years to advance 
legislation to increase our nation's competitiveness in the global 
economy. The President made a priority of it. He said we ought to have 
an 18 percent increase in funding for the physical sciences in this 
year's budget. We should talk about that and make a commitment to make 
room in the budget for that so we can double funding in the physical 
sciences over the next 5 years so we can keep our brainpower advantage 
so our jobs will not go overseas.
  As one Senator, I want to see that we continue to in-source 
brainpower for new jobs by pinning a green card on the lapel of every 
foreign student who earns a degree in science, technology, engineering, 
or mathematics from a U.S. university, and who is legally here and 
passes a background check. We could have a good debate here in the 
Chamber about whether it is a good idea to do that. I think it is.
  We have 570,000-something foreign students here. Why would we attract 
the brightest people in the world to study here and make them promise 
to go home and create new jobs in India and in China? Let's create them 
here.
  We could make the research and development tax credit permanent. We 
could have a full-day debate about how to improve our schools. I see 
the Senator from New Hampshire is in the Chamber; he was one of the 
principal authors of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is a provision 
in that legislation which is called the Teacher Incentive Fund. It 
tackles one of the most difficult problems in American education. How 
do you reward outstanding teaching? Well, you cannot do it from 
Washington. But you can fund it from Washington, so in Philadelphia and 
in Phoenix and in Memphis school leaders and teachers are part of plans 
where you pay them more for leading well and pay them more for teaching 
well.
  I did that in Tennessee in 1983 when I was Governor. Mr. President, 
10,000 teachers went up a career ladder. As soon as I left, its 
opponents killed it. But teacher after teacher comes back to me saying 
they wish it were still there. Every time we have a hearing on 
education, we hear the need to keep and attract outstanding teachers.
  We could talk about and debate--and I am sure we would debate--Pell 
Grants for Kids. Why not give vouchers to poor kids so they can go to 
some of the schools that people with money go to?
  Why not go ahead and implement the provisions in the America COMPETES 
Act for adding 10,000 math and science teachers, and give a million and 
a half more low-income children the opportunity to take Advanced 
Placement tests?
  If we want to talk about growing the economy, we can do that. We 
could talk about stopping runaway lawsuits and enacting small business 
health plans. We can talk about lower energy costs. We can talk about 
lowering the cost of Government. Or we can talk about Iraq.
  I have been one of those who, over time, has had some difference of 
opinion with the President on Iraq. I thought he should have embraced 
the Iraq Study Group plan as soon as it came out: Put Secretary Baker, 
Congressman Hamilton, and the other members of the Iraq Study Group up 
there in the Gallery and honor them and accept their suggestions.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my colleague yield for a brief 
statement?
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would be glad to yield to the 
majority leader.


                           Order Of Business

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I just finished a conversation with the 
Republican leader. We have decided it is to the interest of everyone we 
have no more votes tonight, so everyone should understand that. We will 
be out tomorrow to decide what we are going to do after Senator 
McConnell and I have a chance to get together in the morning.
  No more votes tonight.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader.
  Mr. President, I would say that last year I thought I had succeeded 
in doing something that no one else had been able to do. I unified 
President Bush and Senator Reid on Iraq in their opposition to our Iraq 
Study Group legislation. But my point is that while I have been one on 
this side of the aisle who wishes the President had taken a different 
tact, I think in all honesty we are talking about how things have 
changed in Iraq.
  If we look at the Iraq Study Group recommendations, what were they? 
First, transition of mission. Let's shift our military forces out of 
direct combat and into roles of supporting, training, and equipping 
Iraqi forces as security conditions on the ground permit. That is 
happening. It is happening province by province. That wasn't foreseen 
quite as clearly by the authors of the Iraq Study Group report. I am 
not sure any of us saw it. General Petraeus was wise enough to see it. 
He is helping Iraq have a transition of mission of U.S. forces from 
mainly combat to mainly support, training, and equipping. But the Iraq 
Study Group itself, while it set a goal for that shift of mission, 
explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline. As the Senator from Alabama 
said earlier, it explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline.
  The second recommendation of the Iraq Study Group was that we 
maintain a long term, but diminishing, presence in Iraq, with an 
emphasis on diminishing. That is happening. Troops are coming out 
instead of troops going in. Now, they are not coming out as rapidly as 
many had hoped, but they are coming out. They are coming out in the 
spirit of the Iraq Study Group report--not as rapidly as the report 
originally recommended, but as quickly as conditions on the ground will 
now permit. The limited mission the Iraq Study Group envisioned, in 
addition to supporting Iraqi forces, includes protection of coalition 
forces, counterterrorism operations, border security, intelligence-
sharing, supporting provisional reconstruction teams, and search and 
rescue.
  Finally, the Iraq Study Group urged that we undertake a new 
diplomatic offensive, that we step up regional and diplomatic efforts 
to press others in the region to help Iraq succeed. Well, that has been 
happening. It may not be happening as rapidly as everyone in the 
Chamber would like, but these efforts are well underway, with a more 
expansive United Nations mission. But higher profile efforts are also 
needed, including by the President.
  So I would not stand here and say that the Iraq Study Group 
legislation that Senator Salazar and I introduced--supported by eight 
Democrats and eight Republicans, and which we unsuccessfully urged the 
President and this body to adopt a year ago--I would not say we should 
do that today. But I would say as one Senator that I believe that is 
the direction in which we are moving, and the Iraq Study Group has made 
a significant contribution to that

[[Page 2547]]

effort. I, frankly, believe the bipartisan approach here by those 16 
Senators also helped move us in that direction.
  Now, Senator Feingold's proposal and the Iraq Study Group 
recommendations are at odds. In the first place, the Feingold 
legislation sets a 120-day deadline for changing the mission of our 
forces in Iraq and requiring a massive withdrawal. The bipartisan Iraq 
Study Group specifically opposed such a deadline, saying that 
transition should be, as I said, subject to unexpected developments in 
the security situation on the ground.
  The Feingold amendment and the Iraq Study Group differ in another 
way: the continuing mission for the troops. My reading of the Feingold 
bill says that it would prevent American troops from being embedded 
with Iraqi forces, from securing Iraqi borders, from fighting 
terrorists who aren't known to be affiliated with al-Qaida, and 
performing various intelligence operations. Those missions are all 
supported by the Iraq Study Group. It is part of our long term, but 
diminishing, role in Iraq.
  As has been noted today, this is not a new subject for the Senate. We 
have had perhaps three dozen votes on Iraq last year. Perhaps we should 
have that many votes. What else is more important than Iraq? But at 
some point, we have come to a conclusion, and I think on the issue of 
the Feingold bill, this body, by a large majority, has already 
expressed itself. There were four previous votes on similar--not 
exactly the same but similar--funding cut and withdrawal proposals 
offered by Senator Feingold. Those were on December 18, 2007, and 71 
Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on October 3, 
2007, 68 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on 
September 20, 2007, 70 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. 
Then, on May 16, 2007, 67 Senators voted against that Feingold 
amendment.
  We have 100 Senators, and 49 of us are Republicans. Not all of us 
agree on Iraq. So that meant that a substantial number of Democrats 
consistently voted against those Feingold amendments.
  So I know Senator Feingold is sincere and passionate in his beliefs, 
but it would seem to me that four votes are enough on this subject, 
and--as important as it is--we could turn our attention to other 
issues. But if the majority leader, for whatever reason, feels a need 
to bring this issue to the floor of the Senate, then we are ready to 
talk about it.
  We are not all of one mind here, even on the Republican side. We have 
some on this side of the aisle who said when the Iraq Study Group 
report came out that it was a recipe for surrender. I disagreed with 
that and said so publicly and said so privately to the President. He 
was good enough to hear me out one-on-one. I find him to be a very good 
listener.
  I, for one, am enormously impressed with General Petraeus's 
counterinsurgency strategy. I, like most of us, have had a chance to go 
to Iraq--in my case, two times to Iraq, and three times to Kuwait. I 
have had a chance last year in August to visit with General Petraeus 
and General Odierno and to go into the outskirts of Baghdad and to see 
an area where our soldiers were in camp and to have dinner with a group 
of sheiks. One of the sheiks' sons had been murdered in his front yard, 
and they were fed up with the al-Qaida terrorists and were convinced 
that because the American forces were there, that the Iraqis could risk 
their lives by teaming with the American forces to run the terrorists 
out of town, which in many places they have done.
  I still think it would have been better for our troops and it would 
send a clear message to the enemy if we had, as an administration and 
as a Congress, embraced the Iraq Study Group Report because it said 
basically what we are doing today. It said we need to change direction. 
We need to, No. 1, shift our mission, which we are doing. It 
specifically embraced the idea of a surge, if that was necessary. It 
rejected the idea of a specific deadline and said it should be subject 
to developments on the ground. It said we should identify a long-term 
but diminishing presence in Iraq, which we have been doing as a 
country. The Iraq Study Group Report said also that we should step up 
our diplomatic efforts. Its goal--not its binding effect but its goal--
was that all of its recommendations could be accomplished more rapidly 
than has been done. That is true. But at the same time, it recognized 
that it was all subject to security developments on the ground.
  So when we have a success--or it may be more accurate to say a series 
of small successes in a difficult arena such as Iraq--when we have 
military leadership such as General Petraeus and his team who have 
stuck to a new counterinsurgency strategy--at least new to Iraq that 
took our forces out of the Green Zone and placed them on the 
outskirts--when we have done that, then I think we ought to recognize 
that for what it is.
  I am glad to have this opportunity to talk about Iraq and the 
progress we are making there. I hope we can make more there. I would 
like for more of our Tennesseans to come home. In the National Guard 
alone, we have had more than 10,000 Tennesseans in Iraq, some for a 
year, some twice, some three times. They are our uncles, and they are 
our aunts. They are our neighbors, our deputy sheriffs, the mayor of 
Lexington, the postmaster from Robbinsville. They have mortgages. They 
have kids. Ninety have died, 90 Tennesseans in this period of time. So 
it is good to have this discussion. If the majority leader wants to 
bring it up, we should. But I think at the same time we ought to 
recognize it for what it is. We have changed direction. The troops are 
coming out instead of going in. The mission is shifting. The role is 
diminishing. It will be there for a long time, and the diplomatic 
effort is stepped up. If that is succeeding, then our country is 
succeeding, and we can spend more time on other issues.


                         Tornadoes in Tennessee

  Now, if I may--I see the Senator from Florida may be wanting to 
speak, and if he would indulge me another 3 or 4 minutes, I wish to 
discuss what has happened in Tennessee with tornadoes in the last 
couple of weeks.
  On the night of February 5, tornadoes began to hit Memphis at about 6 
o'clock. While many people were watching the Tennessee-Florida 
basketball game safely in their homes, a tornado touched down in Macon 
County, TN, and stayed on the ground for 21 miles. More than two dozen 
people were killed.
  Prior to that, it hit in Jackson, TN, nearly wiping out Union 
University. Fortunately, at Union University, president David Dockery 
had conducted drills, and the students had enough warning to get to the 
safest places in their dormitories, and no one was killed there. That 
was not by accident; it was because of good leadership. It was also 
because of a good early-warning system.
  The point of my remarks tonight is that we sometimes hear in 
connection with disasters--particularly since Hurricane Katrina--that 
our disaster response system and our emergency response system isn't as 
good as it should be. I can't speak to every case, but over the last 30 
years, as Governor for some years and in the Cabinet for 2 years and 
now in the Senate, I have seen a lot of disasters and tragedies. I have 
never seen an example where the local officials, the Governor of the 
State, and the President of the United States acted more rapidly, more 
effectively, or more humanely.
  The Governor, Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, was on the 
scene immediately. He gathered all of his information--not too rapidly 
because he knows it needs to be accurate--and he had it to President 
Bush on the night of February 7 at about 7 p.m. By 10 p.m. President 
Bush had approved it--had called the Governor and approved individual 
and public assistance for five of the hardest hit counties. The 
Governor then went on to commit that the State would pay half of the 
local share of the disaster aid that needs to be paid.
  I went with the President and Congressman Gordon and Senator Corker 
to the Macon County area on the Friday after it hit. I visited Jackson 
last

[[Page 2548]]

week. What I found was that FEMA has already received 3,700 
applications from 14 approved counties. FEMA has distributed $1.9 
million in 14 counties. The first small business loan was approved on 
the day I was there.
  I visited those whose homes were blown away. It is a terrifying 
thought that in just 60 seconds everything is demolished. You don't 
know where to hide. But I also visited with the emergency responding 
team and a couple whose home was hit in Jackson, TN. They were told via 
the television at 6 o'clock that the tornado was coming, and they were 
told 10 minutes before it hit their house that if they lived on the 
north side of the interstate, the tornado would be there in 10 minutes, 
and it was. That was the kind of early warning system they had. And in 
Macon County, a tornado that hit at 9:30 at night has been anticipated. 
By midnight, FEMA personnel from Atlanta were at the Tennessee border 
at Chattanooga. And by 7 a.m. the next morning, disaster recovery 
centers were set up in Macon County.
  I wish to express my admiration, first, for the local officials for 
doing a first-rate job; second, to FEMA and TEMA, the Tennessee 
emergency management professionals who were there on the spot; third, 
to Governor Bredesen who could not have done a better, more thorough, 
more sensitive job; and fourth, to the President and the Washington 
officials who were on the ball.
  It is important occasionally to find the good and praise it in 
Government service, and in this case, I believe--well, I know--every 
single person I talked with in the west Tennessee area or the Macon 
County area felt as if the Governor, the President, and the local 
officials were doing everything they could to be helpful, and they were 
deeply grateful for it.
  I yield the floor.
 Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I strongly oppose, as I have 
before, the legislation offered by the Senator from Wisconsin.
  This bill would mandate a withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq 
and cut off funds for our troops 120 days after enactment. The one 
exception would be for a small force authorized only to carry out 
narrowly defined missions. If this latest attempt sounds familiar, it 
should--the majority has thus far engaged in no less than 40 
legislative attempts to achieve this misguided outcome. And, just like 
the 40 votes that preceded this one, the result of this effort will 
undoubtedly be the same.
  The reason is clear. To pass such legislation would be to court 
disaster, and to set a date certain for the withdrawal of U.S. forces 
from Iraq, regardless of the conditions on the ground or the 
implications for our national security, would be tantamount to setting 
a date for surrender. Should we ignore the signs of real progress in 
Iraq and legislate a premature end to our efforts there, the Congress 
would be complicit in all the terrible and predictable consequences 
that would ensue.
  The Senate, in facing this choice time and again over the past year, 
has voted against legislated surrender in Iraq. Instead, we have 
decided to build on the clear successes of our new strategy and to give 
GEN David Petraeus and the troops under his command the time and 
support they have requested to carry out their mission. The interests 
of America, the future of the Iraqi people, and the stability of the 
Middle East are the better for it.
  But the Senate has come to this conclusion only after repeated 
attempts to do what the proponents of this bill would have us do 
today--bring the war in Iraq to a premature and disastrous close 
through legislative fiat. If ever there was a case for precipitous 
withdrawal from Iraq--and I believe there never was--now is the last 
time anyone should consider such a step. If abandoning Iraq was a 
terrible idea when we were unsuccessful in our efforts there, it is a 
catastrophic proposal today, when we are winning.
  The supporters of withdrawal said in 2007 that the surge could never 
work, that extra American brigades could do nothing to bring greater 
security to Iraq, that no new counterinsurgency strategy could succeed 
in protecting the population. We were losing in Iraq, they said, and 
nothing could change that. Some even declared that the war was already 
lost.
  But they were wrong. As General Petraeus put it in his end of the 
year letter to the troops, ``A year ago, Iraq was racked by horrific 
violence and on the brink of civil war. Now, levels of violence and 
civilian and military casualties are significantly reduced and hope has 
been rekindled in many Iraqi communities.'' In fact, the surge has 
succeeded well beyond the projections of even most optimists. Let me 
cite a few examples.
  In Baghdad, ethno-sectarian violence has fallen over 90 percent in a 
year. IED attacks in Baghdad are down by 45 percent since February 
2007. The specter of civil war in Iraq's capital, a real threat when 
the surge began, has retreated significantly. The capital's population 
has begun to retake its streets, its schools, and its markets.
  The remarkable progress is not confined only to Baghdad. Attacks have 
decreased in 17 of 18 provinces in Iraq since the surge began. In the 
country as a whole, attacks are down by some 60 percent and stand at 
the level experienced in early 2005 or even 2004. Car bombs across Iraq 
are down, the number of civilian deaths has fallen, and IED explosions 
are down, all by significant margins. Intelligence tips are up, 
discovery of weapons and explosive caches has increased, and al-Qaida 
is on the run, having been forced by U.S. and Iraqi troops out of the 
urban areas like Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Baquba and into 
isolated rural areas. U.S. casualties, too, have fallen significantly, 
even in the midst of ongoing operations.
  As GEN Barry McCaffrey put it in a recent report, Iraq is seeing 
``dramatically reduced levels of civilian sectarian violence, political 
assassinations, abductions, and small arms/indirect fire and IED 
attacks on U.S. and Iraqi Police and Army Forces. This is the 
unmistakable new reality . . . The national security debate must move 
on to an analysis of why this new political and security situation 
exists--not whether it exists.''
  In the face of such facts, it is beyond perplexing to see the 
proponents of this legislation seek not to consolidate our gains and 
ensure that they continue but, rather, to force a troop withdrawal that 
would reverse all of the achievements I just cited. Understanding what 
we now know--that our military is making remarkable progress on the 
ground, and that their commanders request from us the time and support 
necessary to succeed in Iraq--it is inconceivable that we in Congress 
would end this strategy just as it is succeeding.
  This is not to say that all is rosy in Iraq. It is not, and neither I 
nor our military commanders make any such argument. The cumulative 
results of nearly 4 years of mismanaged war cannot be reversed 
overnight. Al-Qaida is on the run but has not disappeared, and we can 
expect them to fight back. Fighting among Shia factions in the south 
presents a significant challenge, and violence and crime remain at 
unacceptably high levels in a number of areas. The road in Iraq 
remains, as it always has been, long and hard. But this is an argument 
for continuing our successful strategy, not for abandoning it in favor 
of sure failure.
  At some point last year, a few of the proponents of withdrawal from 
Iraq began conceding that the surge was having tangible, positive 
effects. They went on to argue, however, that securing the population 
was irrelevant, as the point of the surge was to see political progress 
and there had been none. Yet even while this new debate began, 
political progress at the local level took off across Iraq. Tens of 
thousands of Iraqis--most of them Sunnis who were, or would have been, 
part of the anticoalition insurgency--joined Concerned Local Citizens 
groups and aligned themselves with our efforts. Moqtada al-Sadr 
announced that the Mahdi army would observe a 6-month ceasefire, a 
pledge he renewed just last week for an additional 6 months. In Anbar 
and elsewhere, local populations turned to the coalition and against 
al-Qaida, turning that province from

[[Page 2549]]

Iraq's most dangerous into one of its safest.
  In the face of these new facts, supporters of withdrawal changed 
their argument yet again. Maybe the surge had brought about greater 
security, they said, and perhaps this had helped generate political 
progress at the local level, as counterinsurgency doctrine would 
suggest. But this was irrelevant, they said, so long as national level 
political reconciliation is lacking--and since we can never expect 
that, the troops must leave.
  Yet they were wrong again. In January, the Iraqi Parliament passed 
the long-awaited debaathification law that restores the eligibility of 
thousands of former party members for government jobs lost because of 
their Baathist affiliation. Earlier this month, a provincial powers law 
passed that devolves a significant amount of power to the provinces and 
mandates new provincial elections by October 1 of this year. The 
Parliament passed a partial amnesty for detainees that can facilitate 
reconciliation among the sects, and it completed a landmark 2008 
budget.
  Again, these significant achievements come coupled with remaining 
challenges. Parliament has yet to pass an oil law, though oil revenues 
are being shared in its absence; the Maliki government remains 
unwilling to function and provide services as it must, and other 
difficulties abound. Yet it is telling that in his latest report, 
military analyst Anthony Cordesman said, ``No one can spend some 10 
days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in 
every area . . . If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi 
government--in security, governance, and development--there is now a 
very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state.''
  No one can guarantee success in Iraq or be certain about its 
prospects. We can be sure, however, that should the U.S. Congress 
succeed in terminating the strategy by legislating an abrupt withdrawal 
and a transition to a new, less effective and more dangerous course--
should we do that, then we will fail for certain.
  Let us make no mistake about the costs of such an American failure in 
Iraq. Should Congress force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, it 
would mark a new beginning, the start of a new, more dangerous effort 
to contain the forces unleashed by our disengagement. If we leave, we 
will be back--in Iraq and elsewhere--in many more desperate fights to 
protect our security and at an even greater cost in American lives and 
treasure.
  In his testimony before the Armed Services Committee in September, 
General Petraeus referred to an August Defense Intelligence Agency 
report that stated, ``. . . a rapid withdrawal would result in the 
further release of strong centrifugal forces in Iraq and produce a 
number of dangerous results, including a high risk of disintegration of 
the Iraqi Security Forces; a rapid deterioration of local security 
initiatives; al Qaeda--Iraq regaining lost ground and freedom of 
maneuver; a marked increase in violence and further ethno-sectarian 
displacement and refugee flows; and exacerbation of already challenging 
regional dynamics, especially with respect to Iran.''
  Those are the likely consequences of a precipitous withdrawal, and I 
hope that the supporters of such a move will tell us how they intend to 
address the chaos and catastrophe that would surely follow such a 
course of action. Should we leave Iraq before there is a basic level of 
stability, we invite chaos, genocide, terrorist safehavens and regional 
war. We invite further Iranian influence at a time when Iranian 
operatives are already moving weapons, training fighters, providing 
resources, and helping plan operations to kill American soldiers and 
damage our efforts to bring stability to Iraq. If our notions of 
national security have any meaning, they cannot include permitting the 
establishment of an Iranian dominated Middle East that is roiled by 
wider regional war and riddled with terrorist safehavens.
  The supporters of this amendment claim that they do not by any means 
intend to cede the battlefield to al-Qaida; on the contrary, their 
legislation would allow U.S. forces, presumably holed up in forward 
operating bases, to carry out ``targeted operations, limited in 
duration and scope, against members of al Qaeda and affiliated 
international terrorist organizations.'' But such a provision draws a 
false distinction between terrorism and sectarian violence, between 
counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Moving in with search and 
destroy missions to kill and capture terrorists, only to immediately 
cede the territory to the enemy, is the failed strategy of the war's 
first 4 years. We should not, and must not, return to such a disastrous 
course.
  Americans were divided over this war from the beginning, and we 
remain so today. All of us want our troops to come home, and to come 
home as soon as possible. But how we leave--that is of the utmost 
importance. We must not leave, as the supporters of this amendment 
would have it, in a way that erodes all the security gains that our 
brave men and women have fought so hard to achieve and in a way that 
puts us on the road to surrender. The stakes are too high, we have come 
too far and sacrificed too much for that. Instead of surrendering, we 
should persevere with the pursuit of our strategic objectives: to 
defeat al-Qaida, not be defeated by it; to implant in Iraq the forces 
of stability and tolerance, not chaos and civil war; to demonstrate 
that America keeps its word with its friends and allies, rather than 
abandoning them to horrific consequences. The American soldiers we have 
sent to battle deserve to return to us with honor--the honor of victory 
that is due all of those who have paid with the ultimate sacrifice.
  Before I close, I would note that there will be another vote soon on 
the motion to proceed to legislation requiring the administration to 
develop a new al-Qaida strategy within 60 days, and to report it to 
Congress. I oppose putting such a mandate in law for several reasons. 
The National Security Act of 1947 requires the President to transmit to 
Congress each year a comprehensive report on the national security 
strategy of the United States. Title 10 requires the Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff to produce a national military strategy and to 
conduct a biennial review of that strategy, a review that was recently 
completed. The Chairman has indicated that a new national military 
strategy is under development and, of course, the next President will 
be required to issue a fresh national security strategy. In short there 
are, and will remain, a number of legislative requirements for security 
strategies that include a counterterrorism approach.
  Finally, this bill would attempt to limit the President's use of the 
military by imposing dwell times for our forces. While I fully support 
the goal of achieving sustainable dwell times for our Armed Forces, I 
do not believe that we should try to force such a restriction on the 
President irrespective of any contravening interests.
  Mr. President, as the debate over Iraq goes on, let us remember to 
whom and what we owe our first allegiance--to the security of the 
American people and to the ideals upon which our Nation was founded. 
That responsibility is our dearest privilege, and to be judged by 
history to have discharged it honorably will, in the end, matter so 
much more to all of us than any fleeting glory of popular acclaim, 
electoral advantage or office. I hope we might all have good reason to 
expect a kinder judgment of our flaws and follies because when it 
mattered most we chose to put the interests of our great and good 
Nation before our own and helped, in our own small way, preserve for 
all humanity the magnificent and inspiring example of an assured, 
successful and ever advancing America and the ideals that make us still 
the greatest Nation on Earth.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concerns, shared 
by so many of my constituents in Pennsylvania and across the country, 
about the war in Iraq and how our efforts there have exacted a direct 
cost on the fight against al-Qaida and its affiliates in Afghanistan.

[[Page 2550]]

  The bills introduced today by Senator Feingold and Majority Leader 
Reid have prompted an important debate about our national security. I 
believe it is our duty, as elected officials, to level with the 
American people on the war in Iraq, both on the reality of the 
situation on the ground and in the context of our Nation's broader 
strategic priorities. We must speak truth to the anxiety of the 
American people on what we are doing to make this country more secure.
  Our Nation recently marked the 1-year anniversary of the President's 
decision to initiate a troop escalation into Iraq. We are quickly 
coming up on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. As the 
President said in January of 2007, when announcing the goals of his 
troop escalation, ``Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders and 
the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress 
in other critical areas.'' Judged by those standards enunciated by the 
President himself, the surge has not worked. While we all welcome the 
reduction in violence, that metric was never the be-all and end-all in 
determining whether the surge worked.
  Monday of this week, the Pentagon said it expected 140,000 U.S. 
troops would remain in Iraq this July, 8,000 more troops than when the 
President's troop buildup began in January of 2007.
  These extended troop deployments have imposed a significant toll on a 
U.S. military already stretched dangerously thin by this war. We have 
provided Iraqis with some ``breathing space'' and violence in many 
parts of Iraq is, indeed, down. That fact is attributable to the fine 
men and women of our armed services and to their skills as the finest 
fighting force in history. Yet Iraq is still not a secure Nation 
because progress on the essential tasks of political reconciliation has 
not been achieved by the Iraqis. General Petraeus has been very clear 
on this point: The war in Iraq can only be won politically, not 
militarily.
  Although the Bush administration immediately praised the three reform 
measures recently passed by the Iraqi Parliament, the package served 
only to postpone critical discussions on the future of the country and 
underscore the fractured State of the Iraqi Government. The Parliament 
approved a 2008 budget, passed a provincial powers law defining a 
division of responsibility between the central government in Baghdad 
and regional authorities, and issued an amnesty bill that may free 
thousands of prisoners from the disaffected Sunni community. But the 
potential details and implementation of these laws, especially on the 
amnesty bill, remain a critical question mark. What the Iraqi 
leadership failed to achieve and the decisions of Parliament chose to 
kick down the road, so to speak, is perhaps more notable than the 
short-term successes. The government has yet to tackle the most 
divisive issue in Iraq, and that is this: who controls the country's 
oil and how to distribute the proceeds. To take the most egregious 
example, the Kurdistan regional government in the north passed its own 
oil law last August, signing dozens of contracts with international oil 
firms, which the central government in Baghdad deems illegal. The 
Iraqis have devised a de facto approach for splitting oil proceeds in 
the short term, but that arrangement is vulnerable to breakdown at any 
time.
  Legislative accomplishments by the Iraqi Parliament are welcome but 
can be very deceiving. So long as the very parliamentarians who passed 
these recent bills cannot leave the Green Zone without fear of 
assassination attempts or suicide bombings, Iraq remains an unsecured 
nation.
  Just as Iraqi progress on internal reconciliation is sorely lacking, 
I am also distressed by our short-term strategy of pacifying local 
actors in Iraq to improve security while ignoring the underlying 
political and sectarian fault line in Iraq. In short, this approach is 
not sustainable and is undermining--undermining--our overarching 
objective of national reconciliation.
  At the same time we speak of bridging the sectarian divides, the U.S. 
``awakening strategy'' in western and central Iraq is arming Sunni 
tribal leaders and integrating former insurgents into the rough 
equivalent of militias--all in a process separate from and parallel to 
the national armed forces of Iraq.
  As an article in Time magazine recently noted, a number of these 
``concerned local citizens'' militias, organized and supported by the 
U.S. military, are now turning on each other in a contest for influence 
and territory. The Shia-led central government views these armed 
militias as undermining its central authority and has balked at 
integrating large numbers of Sunnis into the national Iraqi security 
forces. So at this point we must ask ourselves whether the U.S. 
Government, in service of a worthy but short-term objective of 
suppressing violence in Iraq, is only paving the road for a large-scale 
future conflict by arming sectarian groups separate from the national 
army and police. That is an important question we must consider.
  Let me say, Mr. President, sometimes short and telling anecdotes tell 
a story. We have read recently that the Iranian President, Mr. 
Ahmadinejad, will make a visit to Baghdad next week for talks with 
Prime Minister al-Maliki and other officials. This visit has already 
been announced, with details of his itinerary available to the press 
and the public. By sharp contrast, when President Bush, Secretary Rice 
and/or Secretary Gates visit Iraq, they travel to Baghdad unannounced 
and rarely leave the fortified walls of the Green Zone.
  Another example. When Senator Durbin and I visited Iraq last August, 
we flew from the airport to the Green Zone in low-flying, fast-moving 
helicopters practicing evasive maneuvers. Here is a question we should 
ask ourselves: Why can the Iranian President drive in an open manner 
into Baghdad while U.S. leaders must sneak into the country under the 
cloak of darkness? Five years into our occupation of Iraq, what does 
this say about our role in Iraq and the security of that nation?
  As Iraq continues to dominate the attention and resources of our 
Government, it clouds and confuses our long-term U.S. strategic 
priorities. I remain troubled, as so many others here remain troubled, 
that a ``Declaration of Principles'' signed on November 26, 2007, by 
President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki commits our Nation to 
``providing security assurances and commitments to the Republic of Iraq 
to deter future aggression against Iraq that violates its sovereignty 
and integrity of its territories, waters, or airspace.'' That is what 
the Declaration of Principles says in part.
  Although Secretary Rice assured me during a recent Senate Foreign 
Relations hearing that no such commitments will be extended to Iraq, I 
remain deeply skeptical. In concert with my colleagues, I will continue 
to exercise vigorous oversight to ensure that President Bush does not 
lock the United States into a binding and long-term security commitment 
to Iraq.
  It is time to refocus our energies and our efforts on the ``forgotten 
war'' in Afghanistan. Our focus on Iraq has distracted from and 
undermined the central front in the war on terrorism.
  ADM Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently 
testified before Congress, and he said:

       In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we 
     must.

  With all due respect to Admiral Mullen, he has it wrong. We should do 
what we must in both places.
  We know that 6 years ago America was fighting and winning the war in 
Afghanistan, and al-Qaida and the Taliban were on the run. But instead 
of staying and accomplishing our mission in Afghanistan by hunting down 
those who planned the 9/11 attacks, this administration diverted our 
attention to Iraq. Today, the Taliban has returned with a vengeance and 
controls more territory than at any time since its ouster in 2001. 
Afghanistan is on the brink of becoming yet again a failed state and 
thus a safe haven for al-Qaida to launch deadly attacks, including 
against the American homeland.
  Three recent bipartisan reports on Afghanistan concluded that the 
situation on the ground is dire. One report, coauthored by retired 
general Jim

[[Page 2551]]

Jones and Ambassador Thomas Pickering, puts it bluntly, and I quote in 
part:

       The progress achieved after 6 years of international 
     engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, 
     weakening international resolve, mounting regional 
     challenges, and a growing lack of confidence on the part of 
     the Afghan people about the future direction of their 
     country. The United States and the international community 
     have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few 
     military forces and insufficient economic aid, and without a 
     clear and consistent comprehensive strategy.

  That is the Jones and Pickering report from which I am quoting.
  When Secretary of Defense Gates is forced to go public with 
criticisms of the refusal of our NATO allies to deploy more forces in 
Afghanistan and his skepticism of their ability to conduct 
counterinsurgency operations, we must admit that the situation on the 
ground is getting worse in Afghanistan, not better. Military officials 
expect the coming year to be even more deadly, as the Taliban becomes 
more deadly and deploys greater numbers of suicide bombers and roadside 
explosives. U.S. forces remain largely isolated in Afghanistan, with 
key NATO allies refusing to provide ground support and imposing onerous 
restrictions on where and how they can fight. The end result is that 
the very future of NATO, the most successful alliance in modern 
history, is now in grave danger.
  In a welcome display of straight-talk, Secretary Gates admitted that 
the very reason large segments of the European public do not support 
NATO operations in Afghanistan is due to their antipathy toward U.S. 
policy in Iraq. Secretary Gates recently asserted in Munich:

       Many of them, I think, have a problem with our involvement 
     in Iraq and project that to Afghanistan, and do not 
     understand the very different--for them--the very different 
     kind of threat.

  That is what Secretary Gates said recently.
  Mr. President, let me conclude with this thought: The war in Iraq has 
indeed strained our military, limiting the number of combat divisions 
we can provide in Afghanistan. It has undermined our global leadership, 
depriving us of the moral authority to demand more of our allies, and 
it has diverted the attention of our senior military and civilian 
leadership, allowing the Taliban to mount a comeback under our very 
eyes. We are losing a war we cannot afford to lose in a futile and 
misguided effort to force success in another conflict that can only be 
won politically, not militarily. Our priorities are tragically 
mistaken, and our Nation is paying a severe cost.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________