[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5590-5592]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                IRAQ WAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Perlmutter). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Yarmuth) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor once again to come to 
the floor of the House as a representative of the landmark class of 
2006 known as the majority makers, a group of 41 Democrats elected from 
23 States who were sent here by the American people to change the 
direction of the country.
  Of course one of the primary issues that was at the heart of the 
campaign in 2006 was our involvement in Iraq and

[[Page 5591]]

Afghanistan. And this week that effort, national effort, has taken 
greater significance because we once again heard from General Petraeus 
and Ambassador Crocker about the progress or the situation, I should 
say, in Iraq. They testified before two congressional committees, two 
Senate committees yesterday and the House committees today. Their 
testimony, I think, raises two issues that I want to address tonight.
  Of course the first is what the situation is in Iraq and what the 
prospects for success are in that part of the world. And, secondly, 
what is the cost to the American people and to the American economy 
because as we all know, the costs are varied and they are significant. 
They rise to magnitudes that we are not used to discussing in this 
country, both in human cost which of course is our top priority, and 
also the economic cost. And then there is the future cost as well 
because what we are doing is incurring obligations for our future 
generations that are real, that are incredibly large, and that the 
American people need to focus on because as we go forward and try to 
establish policies and have a national debate about what the 
appropriate course of action is in Iraq, we have to discuss again not 
just the human costs but also the cost to future generations of the 
American people, juxtaposed against the benefits and potential benefits 
of our continued involvement.
  There are two things I think we need to say from the outset that 
really underlie all of these discussions and that is everyone in this 
body, in the Congress and in the country wants the United States to be 
successful, wants there to be a peaceful and beneficial result in Iraq. 
We all want a stable Middle East. We all want a stable, peaceful world. 
No one in this body or anywhere else that I know of is rooting for us 
to be unsuccessful in Iraq.
  The second thing that we need to focus on is that it is unavoidable 
that we have to talk about economics and it is sad that we even have to 
talk about money because already we have lost 4,000 American men and 
women in Iraq. We have had virtually 30,000 wounded, many seriously, 
many with life-altering injuries; and the cost to the Iraqi people, of 
course, is also extraordinary with 2 million people having left Iraq, 
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Iraqi civilians dying, and many more 
dislocated throughout the country, families torn apart and lives 
ruined.
  So the human cost of the U.S. involvement in this effort in Iraq and 
also in Afghanistan cannot be minimized, and nobody is trying to. That 
of course is the ultimate cost. But we do have to talk about the 
economic cost of this war because we are looking at a situation in 
which we have potential exposure throughout the world. We have a 
military that will be called on to be deployed in other situations, not 
just in the Middle East. We have by almost everyone's estimation a much 
more serious and ominous threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan that will 
require continued involvement of American forces, and where it is clear 
to everyone that terrorists, including particularly al Qaeda, are much 
more active and we need to focus much more intensely on Afghanistan and 
our involvement in Iraq is, of course, preventing us from doing as much 
as we could and probably should in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  These are all of the dynamics that we face as we discuss these 
issues. Two things in particular concern me about the testimony of 
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker yesterday. And, of course, 
everyone quite justifiably honors their service and their commitment to 
their duty, and they are certainly fulfilling their obligations well.
  But two things in particular disturb me greatly, and one was when 
asked continuously by a number of Senators and House Members to 
describe the conditions under which we might be able to withdraw a 
substantial number of our forces from Iraq, General Petraeus basically 
said we will know them when we see them. He could not identify them. 
And he said, Well, we will look at it again in a few months. We will 
look at it in September. Maybe we can start withdrawing them then; 
maybe we can't.
  What's the measure for success? He wouldn't specify. He couldn't 
specify. And I don't think he was being coy. I think, in fact, his 
unwillingness to specify or identify the conditions under which we 
might be able to leave was purely a function of the fact that we don't 
know what the conditions are, and we have never known exactly what we 
were trying to accomplish in that country.
  The goalposts have been moved continuously. There have been dozens of 
different reasons for our involvement mentioned over the last 5 years. 
And it is, I think, quite indicative yesterday when asked on numerous 
occasions again what would you see, what would you have to see before 
you would recommend withdrawing more troops, General Petraeus and 
Ambassador Crocker said, Well, we'll know it when we see it; it is a 
matter of what the conditions are.
  That is an important point to make.
  Another answer that he gave to a question asked by Senator Biden, I 
think, was quite revealing. When Senator Biden asked when you come back 
and make your evaluation and assessment in September of this year, at 
that point do you think there is any chance that we could be within 30 
days of having troops withdrawal?
  General Petraeus said at that point, Well, it might be that very day. 
Of course he went on to say it could be a month later, it could be many 
months later, it could be years later.
  When I heard him say that it occurred to me if he was willing to say 
there was a possibility that we could be out, be able to start 
withdrawing significant numbers of troops in September, if that was a 
possibility, he should know what the metrics are, what the conditions 
he would have to be looking for in September to allow us to do that. 
And yet when asked what are the conditions, he couldn't identify them.
  So again, I think all of these points, reading between the lines, 
indicate that we are not getting the full story about what we should 
look for as a measure of success in Iraq because the people on the 
ground don't know what the measures are. I think they would tell us if 
they knew, but I don't think they know. And that is a pretty 
frightening thought because we are being asked to carry the burden of 
an incredibly large cost as a society.
  Now many of us are not asked, unfortunately, I think in many ways, we 
are not asked to bear any of the burden. Most of the burden is being 
borne directly by the military families and the soldiers who are 
overseas in deployment, many for several deployments. They are bearing 
the hardest burden; but we are also bearing a serious cost, and it 
mounts by the second.
  As a matter of fact, every minute that I spend speaking here, we are 
spending, the American taxpayers are spending $230,000. Every minute, 
$230,000 is being spent in Iraq; $4,000 a second. That mounts up. It 
becomes real, real money. It becomes $14 million an hour; $340 million 
a day; $2.5 billion a week, $10 billion a month; and while some 
estimates are higher, $125 billion a year, and that is just in Iraq.
  Now I know, believe me, that many people have a hard time grasping 
what a billion dollars is, what $120 billion are, but there are a 
couple of easy ways to describe it. With $120 billion in 1 year, you 
could give every teacher in the United States a $20,000 a year raise. 
Every teacher. Every one of our 6 million teachers in the United 
States, and I think most people agree teachers are drastically 
underpaid, we could give them a $20,000 a year raise with what we are 
spending in Iraq.
  We could pay for the health care of about 16 or 17 million people 
every year. That 47 million people we have uninsured, we could cover 16 
or 17 million of those people with that $125 billion that we are now 
spending in Iraq.
  We all know we have huge infrastructure needs in this country, 
bridges to repair, highways to repair, schools to rebuild. Throughout 
the country we face trillions of dollars of needed repairs and new 
construction on our infrastructure. This would make a considerable 
investment in that seriously needed national agenda. But that is going 
overseas. And, unfortunately, it

[[Page 5592]]

is going to where it is not an investment, it is money that is 
irretrievably lost.
  We could also, and this is taking what we spend every day, that $340 
million or so we spend every day in Iraq, we could hire 2,000 more 
Border Patrol agents; 18,000 more students could receive Pell Grants to 
help them attend college for an entire year; 48,000 homeless veterans 
could be provided a place to live; 317,000 more kids could receive 
recommended vaccinations for a year; almost a million families could 
get help with their energy bills. The list goes on and on. This is the 
cost of this war in economic terms to the American people. This is the 
lost opportunity, the lost opportunity for our American people.
  What is even worse is it would be one thing if we had this money, but 
we don't have this money. We know we are running a deficit of almost 
$500 billion this year, so we are borrowing this money. We are not just 
saying we have $125 billion lying around, we can allocate this to Iraq, 
no problem. We are borrowing it. At least half of it we are borrowing 
from foreign countries. So we are having China and other nations who 
are financing our debt, who are actually paying for this war, but it is 
not free. China is going to want to get paid back some time, and that 
is going to be on future generations. So again, whatever we feel about 
this war, we have to understand the cost, and the cost is real. The 
American people understand that this cost is real.
  A recent New York Times CBS poll, 89 percent of Americans surveyed 
said that the war in Iraq is a drain on the U.S. economy; 66 percent 
said it is a big drain, and 22 percent said it is some drain.

                              {time}  2245

  So the American people understand this. The American people 
understand that while we have a housing crisis, while we have a crisis 
in our financial markets, where we're having trouble actually making, 
having funds made available to make student loans, we understand that 
there's a connection between the economic problems we face and our 
involvement in Iraq.
  And again, I don't think any of us would argue if this were a war 
where there were clearly defined goals, and if there were an 
existential threat to the United States, our security. But our national 
intelligence estimate, our 16 agencies said no, that's not the case, 
that we don't face an existential threat in Iraq. We are, essentially, 
refereeing, as we know, a sectarian dispute.
  And I think what is most frustrating, again, reading between the 
lines, listening to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, is that 
there was never a mention that I heard of anything that we could do to 
change the outcome there; that the implication was we were just sitting 
there, and that we had to wait until they decided that they were going 
to make it okay for us to leave. And that's a very, very frustrating 
position to be in.
  And I wish somebody, maybe somebody did ask that and I didn't hear 
it, but I wish that they had been asked that specific question; is 
there anything we can do to change the dynamics there to improve the 
conditions that would allow us to begin withdrawing our troops and to 
reduce this incredible cost to the American people?
  So I would hope that as we go forward, and you hate to say, as we go 
forward, because we've been going forward, now, for 5 years, and the 
outlook is not any brighter. The prospects for resolution in Iraq are 
not any greater.
  And unfortunately, listening to General Petraeus and Ambassador 
Crocker yesterday, I think it's, unfortunately, true that the people 
who are in charge don't know where we're going and most importantly, 
why we're going.
  So these are things, as the months roll by, while the cost 
accumulates, and while, unfortunately, we will suffer, no doubt, as we 
have suffered, just in the last few days, 13 new American casualties, 
that the American people understand and demand, both of us and the 
administration, that we get a clear picture of what the objectives are, 
what the cost is, and will be, because we have estimates, Professor 
Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the total cost of the war in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, ultimately, of $3 trillion.
  But we need to understand what our goals are, what our objectives 
are, what the possibilities are, what the risks are, what the potential 
benefits are, and of course, what the costs are, because we're not 
playing with small numbers. We're not playing with insignificant lives. 
And this is the greatest challenge facing this country.
  And I hope that we can have the type of dialogue, continuously, which 
focuses on these points, because the American people, rightfully, are 
looking for leadership and progress on Iraq.
  So once again, I thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been a great 
privilege to stand in the House and represent the freshman Democrats 
who came to Congress to change the direction of the country, who are, 
in many ways, changing the direction of the country. And I think we 
will continue to ask the questions that need to be asked, and try to 
bring a much quicker resolution in Iraq and a new direction for the 
American people.

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