Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007

FOREIGN RELATIONS AUTHORIZATION ACT, FISCAL YEARS 2006 AND 2007 -- (House of Representatives - July 20, 2005)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Americans are getting tired of this war. Mr. Chairman, we have been misled and we have been lied to. We trusted the President, and when the President came to us after 9/11 and asked for the authority to find those who had committed the attack on our country, we all voted for him.

But since that time, the President did not go after the perpetrators; the President did not go after Osama bin Laden. Instead, he went to Iraq. They went to Iraq because they told us there were weapons of mass destruction, and now we have discovered there were no weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda is still out there operating, and we are still in Iraq.

Why are we there? The President came and told us, ``mission accomplished.'' And then we find that our soldiers are being attacked every day. They are dying, over 1,760; over 15,000 maimed. They have lost their arms and legs and eyes.

Another lie. We were told that the soldiers had everything that they needed, and then we find just yesterday in talking with one of the soldiers returned from Iraq, he has been drinking filthy, dirty water; did not even have clean water, did not even have bulletproof vests, and we found that the Humvees did not have the armor.

They also told us they were going to get the proceeds from the oil that they were going to pump and they were going to pay for rebuilding of the infrastructure. No, that is not happening. We are spending over $1 billion per week, and it goes on and on and on.

But, better yet, in this amendment they talk about not getting out until we train the Iraqi soldiers. How long and when? We were told they had trained over 40,000. Guess what? I say to my colleagues, only 5,000 have been trained and they do not have a plan for how to get it done. We do not even have enough people that speak the language to be able to train the Iraqi soldiers. How long is this going to go on?

When people get up here and say they know that there is going to be more violence, more people are going to be killed, whose children are we talking about? Whose father are we talking about? Whose mother, whose daughter are we talking about? It is all right for us to say, there will be more deaths, there will be more violence, but I say to my colleagues, Americans are getting tired of it. It is their children, and we should not take that lightly.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov