National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006 -- (Senate - November 14, 2005)

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for the amendment offered by Senator Levin from Michigan. I was pleased to work with a number of my colleagues on this amendment, including Senator Levin, Senator Biden, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Kerry, Senator Feingold, Senator Kennedy, Senator Durbin, and particularly Senator Dodd. Senator Dodd and I had the privilege of traveling together through Iraq just about 3 weeks ago. Our trip was very illuminating. His participation is one I deeply appreciated.

We all understand that there are over 160,000 American troops in Iraq. They are serving magnificently, and they have paid a difficult price for their service. We have lost soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines. We know how important it is to succeed in Iraq.

But the American people are concerned. A Pew Research poll conducted last week found that those polled believed that Iraq was the most important problem facing the country today. A second poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, however, found that 64 percent of those polled disapproved of the way President Bush is handling this situation in Iraq.

At the heart of that, I believe, is a sense that there is no plan. There are slogans--``Stay the course.'' There are slogans--``When the Iraqis stand up, we stand down.'' But a slogan is not a plan, and the American people and this Congress should demand a plan.

That is the essence of the Levin amendment. We are not collectively a Commander in Chief. We should not presume to think so. He is responsible for such a plan, and he has to provide, not just to us but to the American people, a sense that there is a plan that is leading to an outcome which is successful in a timeframe which is feasible. What the American

people are seeing, however, is chaos without a plan.

I did not vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. At that time, my concerns were, after the initial decisive military victory, that we would be swept up in a difficult situation. That is what has come to pass. I thought the cost would be huge then, but I did not expect that we would enter the phase after military operations, the conventional attack, with essentially no plan. That was a surprise to me and a surprise to so many others.

According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, when a lieutenant colonel briefed war planners and intelligence officers in March 2003 on the administration's plans in Iraq, the slide for the rebuilding operations or phase 4-C, as it is known in the military, was simply this: ``To be provided.'' We are still waiting. We are still waiting for a plan that works, that is measurable, and that will give the American public the confidence that our course ahead will lead to success.

We all know in February of 2003 when General Shinseki was asked about the troop strength we needed there, he said several hundred thousand soldiers. He was dismissed--and that is a kind word for the treatment he received. Secretary Rumsfeld said the estimate was `` ..... far from the mark.'' Secretary Wolfowitz called it ``outlandish.'' In fact, it was very accurate, very perceptive--prophetic, indeed, because after our initial entry into Iraq, after the first days of fighting, it became more and more obvious we needed more troops to, among other things, secure ammo dumps that were prolific throughout the country. Perhaps we have lost that window where more troops will make a difference, but we certainly have not gone past the point where a good plan will make a difference, and we need that good plan.

The Congressional Research Service has summarized dozens of reports and articles, cataloging mistake after mistake. In their words:

The lack of reconstruction plan; the failure to adequately fund reconstruction early on; unrealistic application of U.S. views to Iraqi conditions by, for example, emphasizing privatization policy; the organizational incompetence of the CPA; changing deadlines .....

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I could add, a very unwise de-Baathification process and the disestablishment of the Iraqi army. But the litany goes on and on. It was ad hoc, off the cuff. It was not a plan that worked and it is not working today.

We need this plan. That is what the Levin amendment calls for. Give us a plan. Not just us, but give the American people a plan. We have made progress in Iraq. We have had elections. But that progress is fragile and reversible. We have to have a coherent way ahead. And again, hope is not a plan.

This amendment is not, as some would characterize it, cut and run. It asks the President to lay out conditions. It asks to define a mission. It asks to catalog the resources necessary. Then it anticipates--and I think this is prudent--that we would have a phased redeployment of troops.

Just today, in London, Prime Minister Blair talked about British troops coming out next year, 2006. Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President, said the troops are coming out in 2006. British Defense Secretary John Reid--no relation--said that we are likely to see troops come out next year if conditions allow. So the idea of looking ahead with a good plan and making a good-faith estimate as to troop levels seems to me the appropriate thing to do. It is a campaign plan. It is a campaign plan which will give us an idea of how long we will be there.

We need not simply to reflect what is happening on the ground in Iraq. We cannot sustain indefinitely 160,000 American troops in Iraq.

It will bring our land forces, our Army, our Marines to their knees. They are overstretched. They have a billion dollars of built-up maintenance on helicopters and vehicles. And the personnel turmoil is excruciating. We owe it to them to have a plan. And we must be able to show how we are paying for this plan.

This plan would also ask the President to talk about a definition of ``success,'' talk about the conditions, talk about situations which would cause those conditions to be reevaluated. The Levin amendment is asking for the obvious. Show us the way ahead, not in a slogan but in concrete, measurable elements that will constitute a good plan. We have been waiting for 2 1/2 years for such a plan.

What is the mission? It has changed. One of the initial missions was to deny the Iraqi Government weapons of mass destruction. We find they had none.

Then, of course, the mission was to root out terrorist insurgents that might be collaborating with Saddam Hussein's regime. The evidence strongly suggests there was no such material collaboration. But today there are thousands of hardened terrorists that we are in the process of rooting out--after the attack, not before.

Then, of course, there was the mission of creating a democratic oasis in Iraq that would be transformative of the entire region.

Is that still the mission? If it is the mission, we are going to need many decades, billions of dollars, and to mobilize the strength of this country, not just militarily but for technical and political assistance, and we haven't done that.

The President doesn't suggest--from everything I have heard and from everything I have seen--that he intended to do that.

What is the mission? What are the resources? We are spending about $4 billion to $6 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. How long will we spend that much money, and when we finish how much will we have to spend to reconstitute our equipment, to reorganize our troops? Tell us. It is important because we make decisions on this floor that are based upon assumptions about how much we will be spending years ahead in Iraq, and we have to have those numbers. We need the conditions. More than that, we need all this tied into our troop strength in Iraq.

That is essentially what the American people are looking at very consciously.

How long will their sons and daughters be committed to this struggle?

I believe we have to succeed, and I am here because we can't succeed without a coherent plan, not one that is made up of slogans and good intentions but one that is premised on real conditions, hardnosed, and something that will help us and help the American people to understand our commitment and help us to succeed in that commitment.

I hope very strongly that the Levin amendment is agreed to. The Republican counterpart makes a few changes, but the critical change is it essentially takes out the notion of a plan.

The opposing amendment would strip out something vital in the Levin amendment; that is, a campaign plan that would help show, project, the phased redeployment of American troops. I think that is essential.

If Tony Blair can speak off the cuff in London today about the phased withdrawal of British troops, and Talabani, the Iraqi President can do it, and John Reid, the Defense Secretary of Great Britain can do it, then certainly the President of United States can do it. And we ask him to do it. In fact, if we agree to this amendment, it will require him to do it.

I yield the floor.

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