Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for Fiscal Year 2006--Conference Report

DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006--CONFERENCE REPORT

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IRAQ

Mr. DURBIN. Since the war in Iraq began, 2,067 Americans have died; 15,568 have been wounded. Today, I joined my colleagues, Senators LEVIN, BIDEN, HARRY REID, and others, in offering an amendment to honor their sacrifice and service and to seek a new course in Iraq in the coming year. I was proud to cosponsor the Levin amendment. I thought it made three critical policy statements about Iraq.

First, the amendment demanded that the administration provide Congress and the American people with a plan for success and a timetable with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of American forces. Second, the amendment makes it clear that 2006 will not be just another year on the calendar when it comes to the war in Iraq. The next year represents a critical transition period for Iraq, when a newly elected government, as of this December, will take office and must assume the authority and responsibility that comes with sovereignty. This is the year when Iraqi forces must help create the conditions that will finally lead to the phased redeployment of U.S. troops.

The Levin amendment also stated that the administration had to make it crystal clear to the Iraqi people that we were not in Iraq indefinitely. We are neither permanent occupiers nor are we a permanent police force for the Iraqi people. That is a job for Iraq, not for the United States. Building a broad-based and sustainable political settlement is also essential for defeating the insurgency and it, too, is an Iraqi responsibility, not an American responsibility.

President Bush has said over and over again, as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. The amendment we offered asked the basic question, When are they going to have capable forces so that American troops can stand down? How many are standing now? How well is the Iraqi Government doing in defending and caring for its people and training its own military and security forces?

This isn't the first time we have asked these questions. Over 40 of us have asked the President over and over again for a report on this war. Sadly, we are still waiting for an answer, unless you count the reply we received from someone at a lower level in the White House stating that he had received the letter and would send it to the appropriate person to take a look at. That was over a month ago. That is not the answer that Senators were looking for. It is certainly not the answer the American people were looking for. The amendment required answers in an unclassified report because we want the American people to know what is going on in Iraq--the challenges, the progress, and, frankly, if there are contingencies we had not anticipated, let us know that.

What we were seeking to do with this amendment was finally to establish that 2006 will not be just another year. I am hoping that no Senator will stand on the floor a year from now and recount that we have lost hundreds more of our best and bravest in Iraq, thousands more injured, wondering if there is any end in sight.

The amendment made it clear as well that we were holding Iraqis responsible. It is their country. It is their future. They need to take control of their own fate and future with their own security force and a political arrangement that works.

Third, we want accountability from this President. It is not good enough for the President to make speeches about staying the course when the course has led to so many lives being lost, so many dollars being spent. Senators WARNER and FRIST saw our amendment when it was offered. It is interesting because I think what they did is probably a very positive thing. They took the amendment, which we had prepared, and basically made changes on its face. If you take a look at this amendment, this is what we offered. Senators WARNER and FRIST scratched out the names of all the Democratic sponsors and put their own names on there on the Republican side. Then they went through, without even retyping, and made handwritten changes on the Democratic amendment. Some of the changes are innocuous, but some are not.

One of the changes is significant. We made it clear, in language the Iraqis and the American people could understand, what the future course will be. Let me read what Democratic language said:

The United States military forces should not stay in Iraq indefinitely and the people of Iraq should be so advised.

Simple and declarative. The Republican change: They struck the word ``indefinitely.'' Now it reads:

The United States military forces should not stay in Iraq any longer than required and the people of Iraq should be so advised.

That is quite a difference. Our sentence was clear and more decisive. Theirs is ambiguous, leaving open the possibility of American permanent military bases in Iraq, something I hope does not occur. But the most important thing that they did was to delete the last paragraph of this amendment. In the last paragraph, we have asked for President Bush, every 3 months, to report to the American people on scheduled changes in Iraq: How many soldiers were to be trained to replace American soldiers; how many policemen were to be prepared to provide for the defense of and order in their country; what progress is being made when it comes to basic human services, whether it is electricity, water, employment, the guideposts that we use to determine whether we are establishing a civil society, a stable society.

The Republicans accepted most of those, but they did not accept what I consider to be one of the key paragraphs of the Democratic amendment. That said: We expect a report from the President of a campaign plan with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of the United States Armed Forces from Iraq as each condition is met, with the understanding that unexpected contingencies may occur.

That was critical because it says to the President and to the administration: Let us start talking now about bringing our soldiers home. We are not setting a date to cut and run, which the critics said, but we are saying to the President: We have to take seriously the 161,000 Americans risking their lives every single day, and many--sadly, too many--losing their lives and being injured in the process.

It is interesting to me that this morning's news tells us that the Iraqis are now saying to the British: You can start thinking about going home now. That is great. I am glad they can. I am glad that they will return to the safety of their families and their homes. Shouldn't that same conversation be taking place about American troops, and shouldn't the President be telling us that we are going to move forward in a phased, orderly redeployment of our troops back home, as the Iraqis take over responsibility of their own country?

That is what the Democrats offered. That is what the Republicans refused. The vote came down. There were about 40 who voted for the Democratic amendment. Then there was a following vote. That vote is significant. It was a vote on the Warner-Frist amendment, an amendment which was offered to the Defense authorization bill. It is true that it was an amendment which was a cut-and-paste job on the original Democratic amendment. I have in my hand the original amendment and the changes that were made. It didn't go as far as I would like to have gone. It didn't say American troops will not stay in Iraq indefinitely. It didn't talk about the phased redeployment of American forces. But it did say several important things that were included in the original Democratic amendment.

It did say 2006 is a year of significant transition. It did serve notice on the Iraqis that they have to accept responsibility for their own fate and future. And significantly, this Republican amendment called on their President in the White House to report to the American people, on a quarterly basis, as to the progress being made in Iraq so we can monitor whether the President truly has a plan that can lead to success.

That is significant, maybe historic. The President's own party overwhelmingly voted today for this amendment, an amendment which started on the Democratic side but became bipartisan in the end, an amendment which calls on this administration to be held more accountable in terms of this war in Iraq.

Now, the President did something on Veterans Day which is unusual. The President used Veterans Day, of all days, to make a political speech. He criticized the Democrats who were not agreeing with his war policy, on Veterans Day. I can tell you that I was back in my home State of Illinois visiting communities with Veterans Day celebrations in Carlysle, in Flora, and in Paris, IL. It didn't even cross my mind to make a partisan speech. You don't do that on Veterans Day, for goodness' sake. We don't ask our soldiers their political affiliation. We don't designate on their tombstones what political party they belonged to. Soldiers and veterans serve their country regardless of political affiliation.

But the President used Veterans Day to raise a political issue, and then flew to Alaska yesterday and repeated it, saying that his critics are somehow undermining the morale of the troops and showing they don't appreciate the contributions of the troops. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you are Democrat or Republican, whether you voted for the war or against it, as I did--I have given this President every single penny he has asked for for our troops. I have always thought in the back of my mind if it were my son or my daughter in uniform, I would want them to have everything they needed to be safe, to come home with their mission truly accomplished. So for the President to suggest that anyone who questions his foreign policy is not respectful of our troops is just plain wrong.

It is up to us as policymakers to make critical decisions about the policy of this country. But we have learned through bitter experience that even if you disagree with the policy of this country, for goodness' sake don't take it out on the troops and, I might say the flip side of that, don't use the troops as a shield so that you don't have to defend your own public policies. This administration has to stand up to defend those policies for what they are.

So this amendment, with some changes, passed. And what does it say? Well, the purpose of the amendment as it passed says to clarify and recommend changes to the policy of the United States on Iraq. It is significant. For those who said stay the course, make no changes, they lost today. For those who wanted change on both sides of the aisle, we prevailed. I think that is important. I think the national dialog is going to change because of this vote. I sincerely hope it is a good-faith effort. I hope it doesn't go into a conference committee and disappear. I hope it is part of the Defense authorization bill ultimately signed by the President.

There is another thing that concerns me as we get into this whole debate, and that is this question about intelligence. You may recall that when we decided to invade Iraq it was not just the decision to invade that country but to change America's foreign policy. The Bush administration, for the first time in our history, said we can no longer afford a policy of defense. We can no longer say to the world, If you attack us, we will attack you back tenfold. We have to be preemptive, have a policy of preemption.

What is the difference? The difference is the President believes we should be prepared to attack countries even before they attack or threaten us. Well, that is a new course in American foreign policy and one which is dangerous. It is dangerous if the information you are receiving about potential threats and potential enemies is wrong. And what happened when it came to the invasion of Iraq? Virtually all of the intelligence was wrong.

It is true we knew Saddam Hussein was a dictator and a butcher and a tyrant, that he had precipitated a war against Iran that went on for years, claiming thousands of lives. We knew that he invaded Kuwait. All of that was part of history. But before the invasion of Iraq we were told by this administration that based on the intelligence that they gathered, there were other compelling reasons for us not to wait for the United Nations, not to wait for other allies, not to wait and exhaust all possibilities but to move decisively and invade.

What were those reasons? Weapons of mass destruction, which we later learned didn't exist; the possibility that Iraq was becoming a nuclear power, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, mushroom clouds in the Middle East and around the world from Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons; the aluminum tube controversy, evidence that they imported aluminum tubes which the administration said was proof positive that they were reinstituting, reconstituting their nuclear weapons program; connections with Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden. It was argued that Ð9/11 and Iraq were the same story.

All of these were given to us together with the assertion that somehow the Iraqis were importing this yellow cake from Niger in Africa to make nuclear weapons. We were told all these things to reach a high level of intensity and anxiety to lead to an invasion of Iraq. We found after the invasion virtually every single statement was false, was not true.

We analyzed what the intelligence agencies did in the first phase of our investigation and found utter failure. The agencies we most counted on to tell us of threats against America and how we could defend against them completely dropped the ball. I was part of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, and I listened as our staff people went over and reported to us about what they found at these intelligence agencies.

In the ordinary course of events, before you invade a country there is a very careful analysis of intelligence data. You just don't start a war without looking at every possibility and understanding information that has been collected.

Well, that National Intelligence Estimate was not even prepared when the administration started talking about the invasion of Iraq. It was ordered, prepared in a manner of 2 or 3 weeks, just a fraction of the time usually required, and when we finally saw it in the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was embarrassing. It was a report given to us which really didn't carefully evaluate the intelligence data that had been collected, and it is one of the reasons we made this colossal error in judgment when it came to evaluating intelligence.

That was the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. The President has been saying repeatedly that those who are critical of his decision to invade Iraq today had the same intelligence he had, and so if he made a mistake, they made a mistake, too. I disagree. The President of the United States receives what is known as the daily briefing. Each day he sits down with intelligence officials, including the head of the CIA and others at the highest level, for a briefing about intelligence gathered around the world and what the threat is to America on that given day. He has more information than anyone, as he should, as President, as Commander in Chief. By the time you come to Congress, that information has been filtered and chopped and divided and diced and very little of it makes it to Congress. Most of it comes to the Intelligence Committees. Then it goes to the chairman, ranking member, and then down the chain less information is given to members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and even less to the regular rank-and-file Senators and Congressmen. That is just the food chain, if you will, on intelligence data.

So for the President to suggest that Members of Congress had the same information he did is just not factual. He is given much more information. He was before Iraq; he is every single day given more information. So if Members of the Senate relied on the President's representation, the President's statement, the Vice President's statement, and they were misled into it, it is because they believed the President and Vice President had more information about it than they did.

Now, I sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee shaking my head day in and day out listening as the members of the administration would debate issues like nuclear weapons. This is all unclassified now, but there was a serious disagreement between the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy as to what those aluminum tubes meant. The Department of Energy said: We don't think they have anything to do with nuclear weapons. The Department of Defense said: Oh, yes, they do. And the two of them would have at it in front of us. Then I would walk outside the Intelligence Committee room and hear Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying aluminum tubes equal nuclear weapons, and I am thinking to myself: They are not suggesting there is a difference of opinion even in their own administration.

It was frustrating because serving on that Intelligence Committee I could not discuss what was being debated in that room, but I knew in my heart of hearts that many things being told to the American people were just not backed up with sound, concrete evidence, and that is what is at issue here.

We believe the American people deserve the truth, and the truth comes down to this: The Senate Intelligence Committee promised us over 20 months ago that they would do a thorough investigation to see if any elected official made a statement about the situation in Iraq that could not be substantiated with background intelligence. In other words, did any elected official in this administration, or even in this Congress, deliberately or recklessly mislead the American people?

Is that important? It could not be more important. I cannot think of a greater abuse of power in a democracy than to mislead the people into a war, and to ask the people of a country to offer up the people they love--their sons, their daughters, their husbands, their wives, their friends and their relatives--in defense of the facts.

That is what this investigation is about. We have been waiting 20 months, 20 months for it to take place. I don't know what it will find. There is certainly a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered about statements made by members of the administration. But as of today, we still don't know. We are not certain as to whether that investigation will take place.

I would like to know why, on February 7, 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy:

It is unknowable how long that conflict in Iraq will last. It could last 6 days, 6 weeks. I doubt 6 months.

Secretary Rumsfeld, February 2003. That was over 2 1/2 years ago. The Defense Secretary was not just overly optimistic, he was profoundly wrong. His failure to plan for the conflict that could last years and not weeks has had tragic consequences.

On my first visit to Walter Reed Hospital to visit a soldier whose leg had been amputated, who was from an Ohio Guard unit I asked: What happened?

Well, I was in one of those humvees, Senator. It didn't have any armor plating on either side, and one of those homemade bombs went off and blew off my leg.

Were we ready? Did we have a plan to win, to protect that soldier and others? Clearly not. It was not until recently, and all of our findings after 3 years they finally had the armor plating they needed.

On May 1, 2003, that banner on the aircraft carrier proclaimed that the Iraqi mission was accomplished and President Bush landed on the carrier and celebrated the end of the war.

Tragically, at that time the real war was just beginning. Of those Americans who paid with their lives in this war, only 140 were killed during the phase the President called major combat. We have lost almost 2,000

since then. That means 93 percent of our troops who have been killed in Iraq died after Saddam Hussein was overthrown and his army defeated and since that banner was displayed on that aircraft carrier.

Last May, Vice President Cheney said the Iraqi insurgency was in its death throes. Well, I can tell you, as we see the casualty reports coming from Iraq, it is clear that the insurgency is not in its death throes. I truly wish it were. Our generals don't agree with that statement. I do not understand what the Vice President used as his basis for making it.

There is one other element I would like to raise which is contemporary, timely, and troubling. For the last week we have had a visit by a foreign Head of State. His name is Ahmed Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi is rather well-known in Washington circles. For years and years he was an Iraqi expatriate who was critical of Saddam Hussein, and he created an Iraqi national congress organization of defectors and those who felt as he did that Hussein should be replaced. That is a good thing. I don't know of anyone who was applauding Hussein in those years, and certainly Chalabi was on the right track in that area.

He ingratiated himself to some of the leaders in this administration, people making policy in this administration, and became, sadly, a source of information. I say ``sadly'' because we have come to learn that much of the information given by Mr. Chalabi to members of our administration turned out to be just plain wrong.

Ahmed Chalabi helped weave a web of deceit about what turned out to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He helped provide the infamous and aptly named source known as ``Curveball,'' who fabricated information about biological weapons labs. This information became a cornerstone, sadly, of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech and slide show to the United Nations, and it turned out to be all wrong. I suspect that in his decades of distinguished service to the United States there are very few moments that Secretary Powell regrets more than being led into repeating some of these assertions by Ahmed Chalabi and his followers. Chalabi seems to have no such regrets.

I took a look at Mr. Chalabi, who was confronted recently. It was in February of last year, as a matter of fact. He was confronted with the fact that many of the things he told the United States about Iraq turned out to be false, completely false. And here is what they wrote in this article on February 19 of 2004 in the London Telegraph:

Mr. Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he deliberately misled U.S. intelligence. ``We are heroes in error,'' he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

He goes on to say, and I quote Mr. Chalabi:

As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We are ready to fall on our swords, if he wants.

Unrepentant, giving bad information to the American Government, which it followed in planning this invasion of Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, no regrets.

He achieved what he wanted to achieve: Saddam Hussein is gone. The Americans are in Baghdad. The fact that the
American people were misled obviously does not trouble him, but it should trouble others.

What about Mr. Chalabi today? He has a title. He is Deputy Prime Minister in Iraq, and he received a hero's welcome from this administration over the last 7 days.

The other part of this story I haven't mentioned is that on May 20 of last year, the Iraqi security forces raided Mr. Chalabi's home in Iraq, seizing documents and other evidence, and charging him with having sold American secrets to Iran, one of the countries in President Bush's axis of evil, a code that could have endangered American troops and American security.

That is a high crime, as far as I am concerned, the kind of thing which no one can excuse or overlook. In fact, the FBI initiated an investigation of Chalabi for selling or giving those secrets to Iran, and twice last week the FBI told us it was a continuing active investigation. It is ironic they told us that while Mr. Chalabi was the toast of the town in Washington, moving from one Cabinet official to another, from Treasury Secretary Snow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, where he was greeted as warmly as a dignitary from overseas, and then going to visit with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and finally, of course, with Vice President Cheney.

This man under active investigation by the FBI was being warmly received as a Head of State in these agencies. Why, one might ask, isn't the FBI doing its job? Why aren't they calling him in for information, whether he sold secrets that could have endangered American lives? Mr. Chalabi is no hero to me. He seems to be one to some members of the Bush administration. This is a man who should not be treated like a hero. He ought to be treated like a suspect. That is what the FBI said he was last week. The fact he is being vetted by high-ranking officials rather than being questioned by the FBI speaks volumes. Mr. Chalabi went on to say when he was asked about this during his visit to Washington:

As far as we're concerned, we have been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and Americans are in Baghdad.

He said: Let's look to the future. Let's not look to the past.

I think it is clear, as the New York Times editorial stated on November 10, 2005:

Mr. Chalabi is not just any political opportunist. He more than any other Iraqi is responsible for encouraging the Bush administration to make two disastrous mistakes on the Iraqi intervention. Basing its justification for war on the false premise that Saddam Hussein had active unconventional weapons programs and falsely imagining that the Iraqi people would greet the invasion with undiluted joy.

Even after the invasion when people were beginning to ask where are these weapons of mass destruction, Chalabi insisted the U.S. forces were simply in the wrong places and asking the wrong people.

In spite of all these transgressions, Mr. Chalabi is being warmly received by this administration.

Mr. President, I know Senator Stevens is on the floor to deliver a eulogy for our former Sergeant at Arms, and in deference to him and his purpose for coming----

Mr. STEVENS. No, I am not going to deliver a eulogy.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will close and give the floor to Senator Stevens for whatever purpose brings him here.

We believe what happened on the floor of the Senate is significant. We said there must be a change of course in Iraq; we cannot continue. This failed policy brought us to this point. We owe it to our servicemen and their families and the American people to have a plan for success that will bring stability to Iraq on a timely basis, give them responsibility for their own future, and start to bring American troops home.

Our critics say we want to cut and run. No, we want to stop the loss of life by Americans in Iraq. We want to make sure the Iraqis know it is their responsibility for their future.

I certainly believe, as others do, that someone such as Ahmed Chalabi is one of the reasons we made fatal errors in the beginning of this invasion of Iraq. He should not be treated as a hero. I didn't vote for this war. In the fall of 2002 when we were debating use of force, I offered an amendment to defend the United States from an imminent attack by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. That amendment got to the heart of the matter with the intelligence of weapons of mass destruction so cloudy. It would have raised the threshold for war. It failed.

Now we have to move forward making certain that we keep in mind first and foremost our commitment to our troops and our commitment to our mission. This is a historic vote today with the adoption of the Democratic amendment as changed by Senators WARNER and FRIST. I sincerely hope this vote will mean a change in policy to bring our troops home safely.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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