National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2008--Continued

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008--Continued -- (Senate - July 17, 2007)

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for the kind words. And one of my first reactions was a bit of confusion. He referenced General Lamb, the British officer in Baghdad, expressing chagrin at the proposals to reduce the troop strength of the American forces. He must have been beside himself last February when Prime Minister Blair announced the reduction of British forces. In fact, Prime Minister Blair stated at that time that 7,100 troops would be drawn down to approximately 5,500. That is down from a level of 40,000.

So at the time that the British are withdrawing troops, we are trying to surge troops. I think the general's peak or discomfort is somewhat misplaced with the United States. I think it should more properly be directed to Prime Minister Blair.

But let me get on with issues that I want to address, and that is to try to clarify from my perspective some of the concepts and terms that have been talked about. One is a repeated reference to General Petraeus's plan. The President makes it, and my colleagues make it. This is the President's plan. General Petraeus was asked specifically in his confirmation hearing what role he played, and here was his answer.

I met with the Secretary of Defense a couple days after he took office and before he left for his first trip to Iraq, and we discussed the situation there during that meeting. We subsequently talked after his trip. I also talked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff several times in this period, noting that a population and security emphasis in Baghdad in particular was necessary to help the Iraqis gain the time and space for tough decisions.

As the strategy was refined, I talked on several occasions to General Odierno. I relayed my support for those levels that General Odierno recommended to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I also supported the additional emphasis in the advisory effort.

This is not a precise quote, but paraphrases his remarks. General Petraeus is not the author of this plan. He, like many officers, participated, was asked questions; he had great experience. He was the head and led the 101st Air Mobile Division in Iraq and was head of our training effort. But this is not his plan.

Now, he has accepted this plan. He did that publicly. But this is the President's plan. And at the heart of the President's plan is the statement he made on January 10 when he announced it.

I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people and lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The prime minister understands this.

Well, apparently, the prime minister did not understand, because in the intervening months, exactly what the President feared has happened. There has been no adequate political progress in Iraq. That is key rationale for the increased forces in Iraq. And without this political decisiveness on the part of the Iraqis, our military efforts will not be decisive. And what has happened because of this failure to act is precisely as the President suggested? The American people have increasingly become critical of the policy in Iraq. Their support is eroding, and similarly the Iraqi people.

So you have a situation now where the logic and the premise for the surge, for the troop levels we are maintaining in Iraq, was the fact there would be political progress. Since January, to date there has not been political progress. I daresay there is very few, if any, of my colleagues that will argue that between now and September 15 we will see remarkable progress by the Iraqi Government. Indeed, it is suspected, confirmed practically, that the Iraqi Assembly will adjourn in August for the month. So the reality is that on these critical issues of political will and decisiveness and political progress, we will know nothing in September that we do not know now.

Given the incredibly complicated political system, the incredibly complicated institutional challenges facing the Iraqi Government, the notion that we will know more even at the end of this year or the beginning of next year is doubtful. Without this political progress, all our military efforts will not produce success. That is one reason I think we have to begin to change course. We have to begin to adjust our effort to protect our self-interests and our interests in the region, but no longer be the broker, if you will, for political progress in Iraq that does not materialize.

My colleagues have been on the Senate floor and said time and time again that there have been deadlines imposed, in many cases by the Iraqis themselves, that have not been met. The latest report, just a few days ago, suggested these political benchmarks have not been issued. Without that, our efforts and the brave sacrifice of our soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors, and every man and woman who is out there, are not producing the results we want and need. So we have to look again at this strategy.

But there is another factor, too, that I think is important to note. I was just in Iraq--as so many of my colleagues have traveled there, I have also--and I spoke with General Petraeus directly. He gave me every indication that he was not waiting for September; that he had been able to make an assessment over the several months he has been in command, and he is prepared to make a recommendation--unless I misunderstood him--before the end of August.

Now, he might be overruled by the White House in Washington, but he has a pretty good sense of what is happening on the ground, and we should have that same sense in the Congress.

The other factor that seems so critical when it is put next to the issue of no apparent progress by Iraqi political leaders is the fact that by April of next year, April 2008, our military forces will not be able to generate 160,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. The surge will come to an end regardless of what happens on the ground. Unless, of course, the President is prepared to
make Draconian personnel changes, extend deployments to 18 months or even longer, calling up Reserve and National Guard units that are not scheduled to be called up, continuing to rely upon the stop-loss practice, where individuals who are eligible to leave the service after honorable service are denied the opportunity to leave and in many cases are forced to deploy; picking reservists and people who are in the individual Ready Reserve, those are individuals who served their full active commitment, they have left, many of them have gone on with their lives and suddenly they are called up and told get back in uniform, you are going overseas.

Without such draconian decisions, then by next April we will not be able to field 160,000 troops in Iraq as we are doing today. So the reality is this policy will change. The question is, will it change now or then and will it change in a way that strengthens the national security of the United States? Also, will it change in a way it will gain the support of the American people?

One of the factors in a counter insurgency is the fact that you need popular support. That is not something that is a special thing to have or a nice thing to have, it is essential to the strategy. We are losing--the President is losing--popular support with respect to these operations. Without that support, we will not be able to maintain our presence in Iraq.

We are seeing already Americans across the political divide, across the geographical divide, demanding that this Congress act. They have, frankly, little confidence in the President's ability, after all these years, to get it right. That is one of the major reasons we are here today debating, and we will be tonight debating, because the American people are looking for a new direction in Iraq.

The other factor that I think should be mentioned is that, while we have pursued a strategy of increasing our forces, our adversaries--and they are multiple in a complicated theater of operations--have reacted. First of all, they have taken the battle, if you will, the battle we tried to orchestrate in Baghdad, and they have spread it around the country. They have moved where there are fewer troops. This has caused us to spread our operations around. The surge, if you will, the additional approximately 30,000 troops, were initially intended to go into Baghdad.

If you, as I did, listened closely to General Petraeus at his confirmation hearing, if you listened to the President in his January 10 speech, the concept was Baghdad was going to be locked down. It was going to be saturated with American and Iraqi forces. That has not happened because our tactical leaders have determined they must get out of Baghdad, they must go ahead and pursue some of these elements outside of Baghdad, and our adversaries have decided they would rather move on than take us in a head-to-head fight.

Time, regretfully, is always on the side of the insurgent. If they can survive a day, then that is a day that is in their favor. As a result, even with these additional 30,000 troops, there is a question of whether they are an adequate number to take over this population protection mission the President has announced. The population of Iraq is significant. That is another factor I think we have to consider when we look at the adequacy of even the President's proposal today.

The Levin-Reed proposal talks about doing what is not only necessary but frankly inevitable. We have to begin to redeploy our forces. We have to begin to reduce our forces. We cannot sustain this effort because of the structure of our military forces.

The President had an opportunity several years ago, in the wake of our success in Afghanistan and in the wake of the operations in Iraq, to dramatically increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps. Senator Hagel and I came to the floor and we proposed an amendment, in 2003, to do that. This was opposed by the administration because, if you recall, back then this Iraq operation was basically all but over and they were getting out.

Now it is very difficult to increase the size of the military forces. The Army has missed, for the last 2 months, its recruiting objectives. But even if we stayed on track recruiting, we are still in a situation where we cannot grow the Army fast enough, the Marine Corps fast enough, to maintain indefinitely these forces in Iraq. So the strategy must change. If the strategy is not only not supported by our end strength, it certainly must change in the light of the American people.

I think the President made a significant mistake last January. After an election that sent a very strong signal all across this country that the American people wanted change, after the report of the Iraq Study Group, wise men and women on both sides of the aisle, with no particular special interest they were trying to protect or advance--they were true patriots coming forward to give their best advice--suggested that our strategy should be remarkably similar to what we are talking about today: the redeployment of the American forces; switching missions to training, force protection, counterterrorism; engaging in robust diplomatic activity in the region.

Those recommendations were cast aside by the President. At that point, if not earlier, the American public began to seriously question the direction of his policy in Iraq. Without public support, you cannot conduct military operations effectively or for any length of time.

So we face two realities in the United States. Ultimately, the inability to generate this force structure indefinitely and the fact that the American people are growing increasingly intolerant of our operations in Iraq--not our forces there, not those magnificent men and women who are fighting and sadly dying each day but our presence there and the lack each day, in their minds, of any real progress and the documented lack of political progress. It was documented a few days ago on the part of the Iraqi Government.

So we have to change. The question then is what is the best way to do it? We can debate about this. But certainly this amendment, offered by myself and Senator Levin, represents a change. Not a hortatory request for further assessment, not a discussion of possibilities or reference to another study group but a plan of change.

It begins by initiating a reduction of our forces 120 days after passage. That probably will be sometime toward the end of this year, given the nature of the legislative process. It doesn't specify any specific level of reductions. That is the President as Commander's prerogative. It doesn't specify a particular timetable when they can leave, who should go first. Again, that is his prerogative. But what it does suggest and, in fact, requires is that by April of next year, that we have transitioned to three missions--again, missions that were supported significantly by the Iraq Study Group: Force protection--we always have to protect our forces and facilities in the field; counter insurgency, because we never want to give up not only the option but the obligation to strike at terrorist cells wherever they may be, particularly in Iraq; and third, the continued training of the Iraqi security forces.

These I think are missions that are not only critical but they advance our national security interests. Again, this fight against terror cannot be given up. We have to continue it. To the extent that we can create effective Iraqi security forces, mitigates against the real concerns that have been expressed on this floor of the aftermath of what I think is almost an inevitable reduction in our presence. We have to be concerned about that.

One of the vexing things, though, about training the Iraqi security forces, is it is relatively easy to teach map reading and squad drills. It is relatively easy to teach calling for artillery fire. What is hard to teach, because you really can't teach it, is the political reliability, with a small ``p,'' the dedication to the country, the situation in which professional officers are truly professional. That is one of the nagging doubts that everyone has about the Iraqi security forces, particularly the Iraqi police, and to a less degree the Iraqi Army. There are many factors there, too, but we still have to, I think, press forward and try to train these forces.

Our amendment represents the only real possibility of change today, of all those that might be discussed on the floor. It represents not a precipitous withdrawal. It is a phased reduction to missions that are important and are
well within the capacity, I believe, of our military forces to sustain over time. They serve, I think, the much broader interests of the United States.

All of this, of course, has to be complemented by robust political activity, diplomatic activity in Iraq and around the region, something the President has been woefully lacking in his pursuit of, over the many months we have been engaged. We have to make the case--it is difficult to make, but we have to make the case to the neighbors, particularly, that an Iraq that becomes this caldron of instability and chaos that some of my colleagues fear--and, frankly, that we have to at least anticipate, in terms of our diplomacy and some of our military preparation--that this situation would be detrimental to them as much, if not more, than to us.

A chaotic, turbulent, anarchy on the border of any country spells serious problems for that country. That case should begin to be made immediately, not only by our diplomats but by the international community.

We suggest, also, we have to try again to involve others in this effort; not just the United States and Great Britain but others, the international actors. They, too, I think have an interest in a stable region, a stable Iraq.

It has been discussed on this floor that al-Qaida is sitting back and hoping we leave. It is an interesting concept because there is some contradictory evidence. Ayman Zawahiri, who is the second in command of al-Qaida, was quoted recently as suggesting that our departure would actually be something that would cause them some concern. Not because they don't wish us ill, they certainly do. Not because today they don't continue to try to attack us. But because they believe our presence in Iraq, in his words as translated, is a ``historic trap,'' that we are trapped there and that they can use their forces there--not the al-Qaida elements but all the sectarian groups, some of them operating against us because we are there--they can use these forces to attack our troops, diminish our presence, and effectively continue to apply pressure on us.

I think there is a suggestion there that our departure might, in fact, help us in our overall strategy. It certainly will help us to counteract the image which the propagandists, the Zawahiris of the world present, that the United States is committed to destroying the Muslim community by imperialistically invading holy territory. We are in a battle of ideas ultimately, and we are not doing a very good job because what they are able to show throughout the entire Islamic world is our forces in Iraq and our forces in Afghanistan but particularly in Iraq and try to validate their claim, their propaganda, that is why they exist, to resist us.

In the course of our strategy going forward, one should think at least about the efficacy of our presence there, not in terms of a bulwark of security in Iraq but as a way that we, in fact, are playing into the hands of many of these Iraqi terrorists, these international terrorists.

One of the other aspects we face as a reality on the ground is the complex situation in Iraq. Too often I think the President and others try to simplify this as this battle for Iraq is the central front in our battle against al-Qaida. I would argue the central front in our battle against al-Qaida is somewhere in Pakistan. That is where bin Laden is, where Zarqawi is, that is where it is reported that hundreds of Iraqis and others, Europeans, Chechens, are training to be jihadist terrorists across the globe. But regardless of where the central front is, the issue I think we have to recognize and grasp is that our presence in Iraq is something we cannot sustain indefinitely.

We have to focus, I think, on the other threats, focus more diligently on these other threats. Now, we have a situation in Iraq, a complicated situation of Kurds, Shia, and Sunni, together with criminals, together with terrorist elements, al-Qaida. Too often, as I said, we try to make the point it is just about al-Qaida.

We have made progress in Anbar Province because in that Sunni region, the Sunni tribal leaders have united against al-Qaida. But that does not define the most decisive factor in Iraq, and that is the conflict between the Sunni community and the Shia community; a community on one hand, the Sunnis, who feel profound entitlement, and on the other hand, the Shia, who feel a profound sense of paranoia.

I think we have to ask ourselves seriously, will that profound conflict between the two communities be resolved in 30 days, on September 15; will it be resolved in a week; more than that; October 1; will it be resolved 6 months from now?

It has lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is the fuel that is generating the conflict we see in Iraq today. Without the political steps of the Iraqi Government leaders at least to attempt to deal with this issue, our presence will not deal with--I think in the short term--the solution.

Senator Levin and I have proposed what I believe is the most practical, feasible, realistic policy we can pursue today in Iraq; indeed, as I suggest, a policy which perhaps not in the same terms but in the same substance will inevitably be the policy of this country. I hope today, though, we can take decisive action to move to our bill, avoid a filibuster, to vote up or down and move forward with a new direction for Iraq, a new direction for our country.

I note the presence of the senior Senator from West Virginia.

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