[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3587-3588]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I call this body's attention to the recent 
developments in Iraq. Last month, Iraqis went to the polls to vote in 
the second provincial election since the hand-over of power in 2004. 
Elections were conducted peacefully under the watchful eyes of Iraqi 
security forces, and the results were quickly certified by the United 
Nations.
  This peaceful expression of political will is yet another 
demonstration of political progress in Iraq. Less than 2 years after 
some were declaring the war lost and the surge a failure, violence has 
declined, and the world--

[[Page 3588]]

most importantly the Arab world--saw Iraqis peacefully voting, their 
security ensured by an increasingly competent Iraqi army and police.
  Not only was the election process successful, the results also merit 
attention. The Iraqi people voted in favor of secular parties competing 
with the Iranian-backed religious parties. These results in many ways 
represent a remarkable change from the 2005 provincial elections that 
strengthened many extremist and foreign-backed parties opposed to the 
central government. Sunnis, who largely boycotted the 2005 elections, 
participated broadly in January's election. Their involvement should 
enhance national reconciliation and bolster a more moderate and diverse 
government representative of the Iraqi people.
  This progress is reversible. A lot rests on whether the President 
listens to his generals in the coming weeks and months or whether he 
bows to liberal interest groups and his campaign rhetoric and initiates 
a premature retreat. But this is an important sign of what our soldiers 
and the Iraqi people have worked so hard to achieve. Again, in 2 years 
since the surge began, and now that it has been over for 6 months, we 
have seen a constant decrease in violence, increased capabilities by 
the Iraqi government and military, and now an election where the Iraqi 
people largely chose moderate parties over extremist ones.
  Unfortunately, the media devoted little attention to the success of 
these peaceful elections, just as they have neglected many of the noble 
efforts of our men and women in uniform. I recently received an email 
from a constituent whose brother-in-law is currently serving in the 
10th Combat Support Hospital at Ibn Sina Hospital, Baghdad. In the 
building that used to provide health care to Saddam's family and the 
Baathist elite, these servicemen and women provide some of the best 
care in the country to all types of patients, from Iraqi children 
burned by household kerosene lamps to American soldiers with traumatic 
injuries. Their hard work and the self-sacrifice of all who serve in 
Iraq has contributed to the dramatic progress made in Iraq.

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