Blue Dog Coalition 1/2//07

BLUE DOG COALITION

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Mr. COSTA. Thank you very much, the gentleman from Arkansas. I appreciate having an opportunity to share with my fellow Blue Dog colleagues this evening the challenges that our country is facing as we wage this war on terrorism, and try to bring together some level of stability in Iraq.

The War Funding Accountability Act that the Blue Dog Coalition is sponsoring, that we present to you this evening, is an attempt to bring accountability that has sorely been missing almost 4 years now after we have been engaged in this effort. And we, as Americans, are all engaged in this effort.

This War Accountability Act, if it successfully passes Congress, would require the Department of Defense Inspector General, as well as the Special Inspector General for Iraq on Reconstruction, to report to the Congress every 30 days after any supplemental bill passes, and quarterly thereafter. These reports, unfortunately, have been lacking over the last 4 years.

Now, as we look back, there has been a lot of water that has passed under this bridge, at tremendous costs, beginning first with over 3,000 American lives, men and women that have been lost, and over 20,000 Americans who have suffered injuries as a result of this engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are talking about the fiscal costs here this evening. But there is no way that we can put a cost or a value on the American lives that have been lost in this effort to try to bring stability and continue to protect Americans on this war on terrorism.

What has been lacking is accountability. The Blue Dogs feel strongly that accountability not only in the fiscal sense, but accountability in how we have engaged in this war effort needs to be seriously focused on. And that is why I am supporting this resolution.

A couple of weeks ago I met with the President, as he solicited our ideas about how we should go forth. I said, ``Mr. President, I was in Iraq last year, among the first delegation to meet with Prime Minister Maliki, and I asked Prime Minister Maliki what his goals were. He said they were disband the militias, reduce violence, get reconstruction going and move the economy.' It all makes a lot of sense. Eight months later, going on to 9 months, unfortunately, the Prime Minister's actions have been far deficient of his words. And so today we are focusing on this War Funding Accountability Act.

But I said, ``Mr. President, militarily we cannot be successful in this effort alone. There needs to be a political agreement in which the major sectarian factions in this sectarian civil war are willing to agree upon on how to share the political power in Iraq and the oil revenues.' Let's make no mistake about it. That is what we are fighting in today.

Unfortunately, that is the sectarian civil war that we have gotten ourselves into, and without a political solution, we will not be successful in Iraq.

I have been there. I looked into the eyes of the American men and women in uniform who are fighting valiantly on our behalf, and we need to put the same support for them as we try to put for you. So as we demand accountability on single-source bidding, on sole-source contracting for the efforts in Iraq, let's also hold the Iraqi Government to the same time lines and the same sort of accountability that we should be holding our own government for. And for these reasons, I support the Blue Dog Coalition on the War Funding Accountability Act.

And as I told the President, ``Put me in the doubtful column as it relates to the surge unless we have a political agreement among the Shiites, the Kurds and the Sunnis on how they are going to share power forthwith and how they are going to share the oil revenues, because otherwise, in my opinion, we are kidding ourselves, and, more importantly, we are misleading the American public.

And sadly, what is at stake are the lives of American men and women in uniform who are in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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