Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to ``Air Plan Approval; South Dakota;

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, no regime-change wars.

No regime-change wars.

I heard it from leftists. I heard it from rightwing people. I heard it from Bernie Sanders. I heard it from Tulsi Gabbard. I heard it from Donald John Trump: No regime-change wars. And yet here we go again.

Almost 25 years ago, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney cooked up claims of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction to justify going into Iraq. Last month, just 2 weeks before ordering the capture of Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. Fentanyl is terrible. It is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It was Donald Rumsfeld all those years ago who falsely claimed there was ``bulletproof evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.'' Marco Rubio has spent the past few months accusing Maduro of leading a cartel that even our own DEA doesn't recognize.

Just like the Bush administration insisted earlier on that oil revenue, not American taxpayers, would cover the cost of reconstruction in Iraq, Trump is hoping people will buy the fantasy his incursion into Venezuela will be cost-free. The parallels to Iraq are alarmingly obvious. In fact, according to Trump himself, here is the only way in which the situations are different:

The difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil.

``We're going to keep the oil.'' He could not be any clearer. The Justice Department can dress this up in charges of narcoterrorism. Secretary Rubio can talk about the promise of a better life of Venezuelans as a secondary effect. But Trump is being very explicit about the main goal. It is the oil.

This is the same guy who for 10 years and over three Presidential runs made not getting into wars a central premise of his campaign. It scrambled the political coalitions. It really did. There were a lot of young veterans who came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and said, ``What the hell is the Democratic Party even for if not to be the party of peace?''

It doesn't mean that we are opposed to the use of force in all situations. But as Barack Obama used to say:

I'm not opposed to all wars. I'm just opposed to dumb wars.

We got away from that. Donald Trump seized that opportunity because he saw those young men and women who came home who were injured with physical and mental injuries and who were trying to reintegrate into society, and said: What was all that for? We have to stop regime-change wars.

That is why he beat Hillary Clinton.

But it turns out Trump is basically George W. Bush but with the corruption ratcheted up. How else do you explain the administration's talking to oil companies before the strikes but not to Congress-- talking to oil companies before the strikes but not to Congress?

The Gang of 8, not all of us--I understand 535 of us can't be briefed on an ongoing, kinetic, risky military operation. I am an adult here. I don't think we have a right to know--all 535 of us--but there is a thing called the Gang of 8. They are supposed to be trusted with the most sensitive national security information, and they were not trusted with the national security information in realtime. But do you know who was trusted with that national security information, we think? Oil executives. This is not an accusation I am making. This is an assertion that the President is making, which is that they were in on it before the kinetic engagement. There is no reasonable explanation for this.

We all know how this is likely to end, and it will not be good for us. We paid a mighty price for our blunder in Iraq in the thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars spent, and untold new problems in the region and elsewhere. In response, as a country, we said no more--no more war--but especially not when our fundamental national interests are not at stake. Yet Donald Trump is now knowingly, enthusiastically dragging us into another conflict again.

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