[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4776]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             {time}   1030
                                  IRAQ

  (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, 
next week the administration is poised to give us and the American 
people a rosy assessment of the situation in Iraq. They are going to 
suggest that in fact there has been no escalation in Iraq, and that 
everything is just fine. Well, everything isn't just fine, and there is 
in fact an escalation going on in the violence all over Iraq. What the 
President's policy is is a bait-and-switch policy.
  The American troops were sent to Iraq to fight al Qaeda, to fight 
terrorists. Now we see American troops inserted into combat, coming 
under fire, dying, and being wounded for the sake of one Shia political 
party that is afraid that it might lose an election in October. What 
are the American troops doing fighting for the electoral advantage of 
one Shia party over another?
  Recently, the Pentagon suggested that this was all a sign of success 
of the surge. I think we should watch those words closely; you may miss 
something. This administration earlier told the people that the troop 
surge was for the purposes of decreasing the violence and creating an 
environment of political reconciliation. The people who were supposed 
to create political reconciliation are now shooting at one another 
because they think they might lose an election in October, and they 
want us to sacrifice American lives to impose the majority that they 
hope to have in that election.

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