Providing for the Safe Redeployment of United States Troops From Iraq -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR THE SAFE REDEPLOYMENT OF UNITED STATES TROOPS FROM IRAQ--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - February 26, 2008)

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as we take up the issue of Iraq once again, the question that should be foremost in our minds is this: Has the situation improved since the Petraeus plan was put into place? And if so, if the terrorists who have been murdering coalition and Iraqi soldiers and civilians there for years are now seriously wounded and on the run, as we are told they are, then the obvious followup question is this: How do we ensure that the progress not only continues but actually lasts?

Our friends on the other side never seem to let the facts get in the way of their proposals for securing Iraq. When the President announced a new counterinsurgency strategy last year, many of them said it would not work. Even the plan's most vocal critics voted to confirm the general who would carry it out. The junior Senator from Illinois embodied this approach when he predicted: The President's strategy will not work, and then cast a vote confirming General Petraeus for the job. Then, when General Petraeus returned from Iraq to report that the strategy was bearing fruit, some of our friends on the other side covered their ears and questioned his integrity.

The junior Senator from New York embodied this view when she said the general's report required ``a willing suspension of disbelief,'' then voted against a resolution that condemned an ad accusing him of lies. And now, after months of positive reports on improved safety and even important political progress, some of our friends on the other side once again want to cut funding for the troops.

In the words of the first Feingold bill that we might be voting on, they want to ``promptly transition the mission.'' They want to tear up the Petraeus plan and cut off funds for the very troops who are carrying it out.

The second Feingold bill is just as odd. It would require the Bush administration, now in its final months, to set out a new global strategy for fighting terrorism even as our military fights the terrorists neighborhood by neighborhood in Iraq and even as congressional Democrats continue to block a bipartisan surveillance bill that we know would improve our ability to disrupt terrorist plots. The second Feingold bill would also require reducing the pace of deployments and an increase in overall military readiness. This would mean not only full funding for the Defense Department but also directing an even greater share of the Nation's resources to defense--something the junior Senator from Wisconsin has not been known to champion in the past.

In other words, the second Feingold bill claims to advance an effective antiterrorist program even though the first one attempts to block a counterinsurgency plan that even early critics of the war are now calling a success. It calls for a new strategy against al-Qaida even while Democrats in the House block one of the most effective tools we have in the fight against al-Qaida.

All of which leads me to wonder, what possible deduction of reason has prompted our friends on the other side to believe either of these bills is a good idea? We already know what will happen to the first bill. Last year, we overwhelmingly rejected it--not just once but four times. It never achieved more than 29 votes. And that was before the success of the Petraeus plan.

But given what has happened since then, th e proposal to cut funds, to scrap the Petraeus plan, makes even less sense today. Just consider what has taken place in Iraq over the last year.

Since the implementation of the Petraeus plan, violence in Iraq has fallen dramatically. Over the past year, civilian deaths are one-sixth of what they were in November of 2006. High-profile bombings are down by two-thirds since June. The discovery and seizure of guns and other weapons caches has more than doubled nationally and tripled in Anbar. The worst kind of violence is dramatically down. Ethno-sectarian conflict--the fighting has fallen from a peak of about 1,100 incidents in December of 2006 to about 100 such incidents this past November. That is less than 1 year. Locals are energized about fighting back against terrorists, with between 70,000 and 100,000 ordinary citizens stepping forward to help local police root out terrorists. And the terrorists themselves are becoming demoralized, with even those who share their religious beliefs driving them into hiding.

This kind of progress is changing minds. One harsh early critic of the war, Anthony Cordesman, recently visited Iraq, looked at the new data, and came to a different conclusion.

Here is what Anthony Cordesman says now:

No one can spend 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi Government, in security, governance, and development, there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state.

A very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state. These are the words of a man whose judgment our friends on the other side were appealing to just last year in arguing for withdrawal. Last July, the junior Senator from New Jersey, speaking on the Senate floor, cited the opinion of Mr. Cordesman before declaring: Mr. President, it is over; your failed strategy, your ill-conceived war must come to an end before more damage is don e.

All of this reminds me of something we saw last summer after the New York Times ran an op-ed by two early critics of the war who had begun to change their views on the Petraeus plan once those views became inconsistent with the facts on the ground. About a week after the piece appeared in print, the senior Senator from Illinois concurred with its central point, after early and outspoken opposition to the Petraeus plan.

More American troops have brought more peace to more parts of Iraq. I think that is a fact.

Yet, since those comments, violence in Iraq has gone down even more, and the kind of political progress the authors of that New York Times piece were hoping for is finally taking place.

A provincial powers law passed, with elections set to take place sometime before October. The Iraqi Parliament passed a partial amnesty law for prisoners--a sign of thawing relations between the Sunnis, who make up most of the prison population, and the majority Shias. The Iraqi Parliament has also approved a national budget that allocated Government revenue, most of it from oil, out to the provinces.

To most people, the lesson of the last year is obvious: Coalition forces are winning this fight, and they deserve our full support and our thanks. The response from most of us has been a mix of pride and new confidence, especially now that some concrete political progress is being made. For others, however, the lesson to be drawn from success is the same as it was when we faced the strongest adversity: Cut the funds, withdraw the troops, and leave Iraq to the terrorists. Fortunately, most of the Senate will reject this view when we defeat the Feingold bills, hopefully for the last time.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my good friend, the majority leader, seems to regret that we are having a debate on the matter he put in the queue for us to have a debate on. We would n ot be dealing with this issue this week but for his decision to file cloture on two motions to proceed on two Feingold bills. The first Feingold bill which is before us, we have actually essentially voted on four times already since the new majority took over in January of 2007. In fact, this will be the 35th Iraq vote we have had since the new majority has taken over.

We spent a lot of time discussing Iraq over the last year. During much of that time, the view of what was happening in Iraq was not nearly as positive or optimistic as it is now. Why we should have a truncated discussion of Iraq at a time when things are getting dramatically and measurably better strikes me as somewhat curious.

So obviously the Iraq debate of the moment has commenced. I have a number of speakers on my side who wish to talk about the success of the surge, the improvement in Iraq, the improvement on the Government side as well as the military side. So we are happy to engage in this debate. It was not our decision to schedule it. This was the decision of the majority to devote whatever time was necessary this week to a discussion of these two Feingold bills related to Iraq.

So we look forward to the discussion. I believe we have a number of people lined up who would be happy to engage in the Iraq discussion, and we will continue that until such time as there is a mutual agreement to yield back time, which may or may not occur, depending upon the situation and how many speakers we have. This is the way the Senate frequently operates. It is the way it was when our good friends on the other side were in the minority. There is nothing unusual about this at all. The one thing we know the majority leader can do is schedule, and it was his decision to schedule the two Feingold bills, and the first of which is now being talked about.

I yield the floor.

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