Iraq
IRAQ -- (Senate - February 08, 2007)
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to move to another topic and say for anyone who has followed the debate this week on Iraq, it has been a frustration. We came to the Senate with the clear direction of the American people to change course in Iraq. Unfortunately, the minority--the Republican minority--decided it was more important to change the subject than to change course. So they defeated our efforts to bring this issue of our policy in Iraq to a debate on Monday.
In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to do anything that is important or controversial. And so we needed help from the Republican side of the aisle because we only have 51 when we are at full complement, and with Senator Johnson recuperating, we only had 50. We needed 10 of their stalwarts to join us, to move forward and say: Let's have this debate on Iraq.
I was hopeful we would have that many. At least seven or eight Republican Senators said they disapprove of President Bush's plan to escalate this war. I thought that was a good starting point, and maybe others will join in to make sure there is a real debate.
Come time for the vote on Monday, we fell short. The Democrats came and voted, with all but one exception, to move forward on the debate, but our Republican friends would not join us. So the debate on Iraq stopped in its tracks. Efforts were made over the next day or two, with no success whatever, to try to revive this debate on Iraq. Now we find ourselves in a position where we moved to the next stage.
That debate was about the Warner resolution, a Republican from Virginia, with bipartisan sponsorship that we agreed on the Democratic side would be the vote. I don't know how more accommodating the majority could be to say to the minority, in this case the Republicans: We will let one of your own write the resolution that we will debate. That is what we said on the Warner resolution. We went further and said to the Republican minority: And then the countervailing resolution, the one in opposition to Warner, write that as well. And they did. That was the resolution of Senator John McCain of Arizona. So we had two competing Republican resolutions in a Senate with a Democratic majority.
To argue we are playing politics with this issue, I think, fails on its face. I don't know how we could be more accommodating, but obviously we didn't reach enough on the other side to get the debate started.
Interestingly enough, I happened to turn on the television last night in my office and here Senator John Warner came to the floor to try to explain what happened when seven or eight Republican Senators who said they opposed the President's plan, some who openly supported Senator Warner's resolution and Senator Warner himself, all voted not to debate his resolution. It is hard to explain to most people who try to follow the arcane procedures of the Senate.
Having said that, the debate is not over. The debate will continue, maybe not on the Senate floor for the next few days. But all across America, in grocery stores, in offices, in churches, all across America, people are talking about this war. When I am contacted by people back in my hometown of Springfield, IL, or Chicago, people are saying this has to change. I understand what they are thinking about in terms of their own children, in terms of the brave soldiers who are there, and in terms of the families who are waiting patiently for their loved ones to return.
We will return to this debate, but the next stage is not going to be a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. The next stage is going to be much more serious. As I said on the floor before, the Warner resolution was a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, which is merely an expression of sentiment. Important as it is, it is still very thin soup compared to an actual amendment
or bill which could make some change in the way we wage this war. That is the next stage. The House may take it up before us because we have to pass the spending bill, and then we are going to return to it.
Senator Reid, our majority leader, has made it clear. The Republicans will not prevail when it comes to stopping this debate on Iraq. We believe the last election was very clear. The American people want us to change the policy in Iraq. We change it by deliberating and debating and reaching the best consensus we can, and that is what we will try to do.
I hope enough Republicans will join us in this debate. This is critically important. If they are loyal to the President and loyal to his policies, then so be it; stand on the floor and defend them. If they agree with us that there has to be a change, that this escalation of the war moves us in the wrong direction, they will also have a chance to have their voice on the floor. But to try to shut down the debate time and again will not ultimately work. The American people want us to face this issue and face the reality of this war and what it means to us.
The National Intelligence Estimate, just recently released, paints a very bleak picture in Iraq about a civil war that is complicated by an insurgency that is being fought by both Iraqis and foreign al-Qaida fighters, along with widespread violent crime. There have been 2 million refugees in Iraq so far, by the estimate of major international agencies. Some 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed last year. Another 1,000 died last week alone--Iraqi civilians. These are not the insurgents and terrorists. Many of these are innocent people--men, women, and children--who happened to go to the market or school on the day a bomb was detonated.
We have lost more than 3,100 soldiers as of today. In this month of February, 8 days into this month, we have lost 26 American soldiers, more than 3 a day. As we postpone this debate for days and weeks, American soldiers continue to die and continue to be injured. That is the reality. We have to understand the urgency of this debate and the urgency to get it right.
The President says he needs 21,500 troops more in Baghdad and Iraq. Certainly now the CBO tells us the real number could be 35,000 or 48,000 because those 21,500 are ground troops, combat troops. They need support troops as well, and many of them will be in harm's way.
When asked how much this new escalation of the war will cost, the President estimates $5.6 billion over 8 months. The Congressional Budget Office takes a look and says: No, you are wrong; $27 billion over 12 months.
Some of us remember a man named Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House's National Economic Council, who made the fatal political error in 2002 of saying that he thought the war in Iraq could cost us between $100 billion and $200 billion. For his estimate, for his candor, Mr. Lindsey was canned. He was fired. Secretary Rumsfeld got on television and said: I think the war might cost us $50 billion. That is on the record. The record shows us he was wrong.
To date, the American taxpayers have paid over $350 billion for this war. With the new request, it will go to over $500 billion.
Imagine the debate we just had between Senator Alexander and myself about $200 million to improve teachers and schools across America that we cannot afford because we are spending $2.5 billion a week on this war in Iraq. We cannot afford to improve the quality of our teachers in America's schools because of the money we have committed to a war in Iraq, a war which, sadly, has no end in sight and a war which is being escalated by this President.
Some argue--I heard it on the floor repeatedly--that any debate about the President's policy is going to hurt the morale of the troops.
This is a copy of The Washington Times, a newspaper which I don't frequently read, but this morning's newspaper says: ``War foes will not hurt morale,' contradicting the statement made by some that if we express opposition to the President's war policy, we are going to hurt morale. Who was it who said that war foes--those who question the President's policy--will not hurt morale? It turns out to be none other than GEN Peter Pace of the U.S. Marine Corps, who is, of course, Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said it. I want to quote it. I thought this was excellent:
From the standpoint of the troops, I believe that they understand how our legislature works and that they understand that there's going to be this kind of debate.
They understand democracy. They understand you can disagree with the President without being disloyal to the men and women in uniform. They understand you can question whether we have enough troops, whether they are adequately armored, whether they are adequately trained, and question those policies of the President without in any way reflecting on our admiration for the troops and their service to our country.
We are fighting for a democracy in Iraq. That is what we say. A democracy has open debate and disagreement with leadership. If we can't have the same open debate and disagreement with the leadership in America, then we are not exercising the powers of our own democracy.
Finally, I would say, Mr. President, that a friend of mine and colleague in the Senate, Senator Ensign of Nevada, came to the floor yesterday and quoted me. Unfortunately, Senator Ensign's statement was not accurate. He quoted me as saying recently that:
If we need initially some troops in Baghdad, for example, to quiet the situation, make it more peaceful so that our soldiers start coming home, then I--myself--would accept it.
Well, he used this as evidence that many Democrats, including myself, had said, well, they are for increasing the number of troops. Here is what I was saying. If we need some additional troops to quiet the situation in Baghdad, then I would be open to it. If there was truly a plan to exit this untenable situation, where a short-term shift in troops to Baghdad could make a difference, I would happily entertain it.
But the fact is that this is not a short-term proposal, it is not part of a plan that clearly brings our troops home, and putting more troops in the heart of a civil war does not quiet the situation. Our troops have achieved what is achievable in Iraq. As the new NIE states, Iraq is now in a civil war and worse. That is not a battle that U.S. troops can win. Only the Iraqis can. The President's plan clearly is not designed to bring our troops home. Nor is he being honest about its costs or the numbers of men and women who will be sent to Iraq in this escalation.
My respect for Senator Ensign is not diminished by this misunderstanding.
http://thomas.loc.gov/