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. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 2633 offered by Senator Feingold.

I think it is unfortunate the Republican leadership has once again put the Senate into a stall. It seems as if the Republicans feel that it takes them 30 hours to make up their mind to do anything. They want to burn off 30 hours of Senate time. I don't know why. What Senator Reid offered them was a chance to move to this resolution, to debate it, and if amendments are going to be offered, they would be offered. They turned it down. They want to wait 30 hours before we even possibly reach that point. As Senator Reid explained it, there may be an intervening motion that slows us down there. But that is what this is all about. This is the Republicans' slow boat for America. They want to slow everything down to a snail's pace, and it is unfortunate that they do.

They know what we want to d o. We want to have a good, open debate on the policy on the war in Iraq, followed this week by emergency legislation to deal with the housing crisis in America. So their strategy is to avoid that debate on Iraq, a debate that leads to the actual bill, tie us up in procedural issues, and hope we don't get to the housing crisis by the end of the week. I guess at the end of the week the Republicans will say: Job well done. The Senate went home and didn't do anything for another week. Well, I guess that is what they think the minority is all about, to stop anything from happening. Isn't it unfortunate.

If you listen to Presidential campaigning on both sides, Republicans and Democrats talking about change, they point an accusing finger at us, saying that time and again, Senators and Congressmen dream up ways to avoid facing the important issues in America. Well, it is time for us to face those issues in a timely way, to give ample opportunity to minority and majority, to debate, to amend, to move forward. Yet the Republicans, as they did last year, are doing everything this year again to obstruct, to stall, and to stop.

Why is this important? The minority leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, was complaining that we have had 35 votes on the war in Iraq. He is war weary of voting on Iraq. Well, I want to say to him I am war weary as well. I am weary of 3,972 U.S. service men and women killed in Iraq. I am weary of 29,000 injured, many seriously, and with permanent conditions they will struggle with for a lifetime.

I am weary of a war this President won't pay for, that costs us $10 billion to $15 billion a month. I am weary of the excuses we have made for the Iraqis who have failed to lead their own Nation while we risk and give American lives in this conflict. I am weary of the missed opportunities in America that $1 trillion spent on this war could have bought us to make our Nation stronger at home--better schools, making certain our teachers are compensated for good work, the technology we need so our children can be successful in this 21st century, medical research funds that have been cut under this administration, funds for extending health care and insurance for families across America, putting infrastructure in place in America so our economy can grow and move forward with good American jobs building those roads and highways and airports and mass transit. I am weary of that too.

No apologies for the Senator from Kentucky for 35 votes on Iraq. That is hardly 1 vote for every 100 Americans who have been killed in that country. It certainly is worth our time to debate this. Even more important, it is worth our time to change this policy in Iraq.

I salute Senator Feingold. He has been a lone voice. There were times I didn't agree with him. I thought he had an approach for this that we weren't ready for. But over time, I have come to understand his wisdom and his insight, and his political courage to bring this issue to the floor. If he didn't fight doggedly to make sure we didn't have this Iraq war debate, we would skate along perhaps month after month without ever facing the music. What we face is a reality.

The Republican plan is to stall and wait 11 months until President George W. Bush, on January 20, 2009, can leave the White House, give a fond adieu to Washington, DC, and say: Well, I left the war; now it is up to the others to try to solve this. Well, it is going to take quite a bit to try to undo the worst foreign policy decision in modern memory in America.

Many of us remember that night in October of 2002 when here in the Senate Chamber we voted on authorizing this President to go to war. I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee then. I listened behind closed doors to classified and confidential information, and I couldn't put it together. I couldn't square with the information we received in the Intelligence Committee all of the dire predictions being made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. It didn't square away.

Where in the world were the threats they were talking about--the weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear weapons, the connections with 9/11? It turned out none of them existed--not one. We found no weapons of mass destruction. We found no nuclear weapons. We found no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrible tragedy of 9/11. All of the pretenses and reasons given by this President to engage us in this war, to risk American lives, and to drag us on for more than 5 years in this conflict turned out to be false; all of it.

There is no greater deception in a democracy than for the leader to mislead the people of a nation into a war, to ask families to offer their children and their children's lives in service to this country for reasons that turn out not to be true. No weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, no connection with 9/11, an d here we are, still bogged down, mired in this conflict.

It is cold comfort to know that as we sent 20,000 or 30,000 more soldiers into Iraq last year that things got better. I am glad they did. I have been there since then. I am glad the surge brought some peace to some sections of Iraq. But that wasn't the reason for the surge. The surge was put in place so the Iraqis could finally take responsibility for their own country, so they could make hard political decisions and govern and lead and defend themselves. Here we are, almost a year later, and what do we have to show for it? An Iraqi Parliament that when we can get them to meet won't even face the serious issues. Time and again they fail to make the decisions they need to make so their Government can govern. Time and again we find excuses from them: They need a little more time. Every day they need is at the expense of American soldiers. Every month they take to finally reach a decision means that more body bags will come home to America and more wounded soldiers will return. So as they take their sweet time making their decisions, we are paying a heavy price as a Nation. And the complaint from the other side is we have had 35 votes on this; haven't we had enough? No, we haven't had enough until we change this policy, until we start bringing the troops home.

You are going to hear a lot of things said about this Feingold resolution. I certainly hope that colleagues and Members will take the time to read it. Here is what it says: It says our future role in Iraq is going to be limited. We are not going to say to the military: Do whatever you like. We are going to say to our military in Iraq: Here is your role. This is what you can do. This is what we will provide funds for.

First: Conduct targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist organizations.

That is certainly something we all agree on. Al-Qaida was behind 9/11, not Saddam Hussein, and we should continue to target them. They have used Iraq as a land of opportunity now to go in and sow their seeds of division and hatred, to try to kill innocent people and to kill American soldiers. Senator Feingold says we will continue to fight to eliminate al-Qaida in Iraq.

Second: Provide security for personnel and infrastructure of the U.S. Government.

That should never be in question. We should make certain our Armed Forces are always there to protect our people and to protect important installations.

Third: Provide training to members of the Iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the U.S. Armed Forces.

If the Iraqis are ever going to take over defense of their own country so that we are not in Iraq for 50 years or 100 years or even 1,000 years, as one of the Presidential candidates has said--if we are ever going to avoid that terrible outcome, the Iraqis have to stand and fight and defend their own country. Senator Feingold says that is one of the legitimate reasons we ca n stay in Iraq. I agree with him.

Fourth: To provide training, equipment, and other materials to members of the U.S. Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security.

No argument there.

And finally: The resources to redeploy members of the U.S. Armed Forces from Iraq.

What is missing from this? What is missing is any unilateral combat operation that opens a new part of this war. For 5 years we have given the Iraqi people all they could ever ask for. We deposed their dictator, we brought the best military in the world to their country, we gave them a chance to elect their own Government, write their own Constitution, and govern and defend themselves. What more could they ask for? We have paid for it mightily, with almost 4,000 lives, the hundreds of thousands who have served, and the thousands who have come home wounded, injured.

I will tell you, for those who think we ought to look the other way for 11 months so President Bush can get out of town, they ought to go to these National Guard deployments and redeployments and look into the eyes of our guardsmen and their families, their tear-filled eyes as they send their soldiers off for yet another deployment.

We have a young man here on the Capitol Police force who works with my office. He is about to face his second deployment with the Navy Reserve. He is taking it very well, with a smile, but he is going to be gone for 8 months--8 months away from his family, making less money serving with the Navy than he makes serving as a Capitol policeman--taking a pay cut because the Federal Government is too cheap to provide what private corporations do for their activated employees--and he will be away from his family for another 8 months.

Easy for us to say: Well, it is only 11 months. There will be a new President. Maybe there will be a change. But what about those soldiers and sailors and marines, airmen, all of our military who are called to serve? That 11 months will be a lifetime away from their families, and during that 11 months some of them will give their lives. That is why this debate is important and why it is timely and why I am glad Senator Feingold has brought it before us.

It is unfortunate the Republican side wants to stall this debate, stall it for 30 hours in hopes we can drag everything out so we will never quite get to the issue here on Iraq and maybe n ever get to the issue of the housing crisis in America. That is the Grand Old Party's brandnew strategy: Stall, try to delay, find ways to make sure we don't get to the important issues. It is little wonder that the opinion of the American people of this Congress is low.

What we should do is look to the positive side. If we change this policy in Iraq, if we tell the President on a bipartisan basis that we have had enough of this, that we want to see a change in mission, we have a chance to change this country. We can take the resources that would have been spent in Iraq and spend them in America. We can make sure we are providing health care, job training, and building schools, roads and bridges. We can create an economic stimulus in the United States instead of an economic stimulus in Iraq. I think a strong America begins at home. Wouldn't it be great if we invested our precious tax revenues in that belief?

Let me tell you what the National Intelligence Estimate said about the state of this war in Iraq. Last year, they gravely noted that:

The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world, and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.

That is a quote from the National Intelligence Estimate. What it says is that as we battle on in Iraq and lose American lives and spend American dollars, we are creating a magnet for the extremists around the world to come and kill our troops and to be inspired in their own sad and devilish ways to kill other innocent people around the world. Did anyone bargain for that when we invaded Iraq? Did anyone think it would make the war on terror more difficult to win? That is what the National Intelligence Estimate tells us.

This administration has recklessly diverted critical military intelligence and civilian assets from Afghanistan in the process. That was a war I voted for, without reservation--a unanimous vote in the Senate, just days after the attack on 9/11. We knew where that attack came from. It didn't come from Saddam Hussein and Iraq, it came from Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and the al-Qaida forces that were running rampant through Afghanistan. Well, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated because we have spent so much on human life and American dollars on Iraq. That is the reality of this administration's priorities.

The Taliban and al-Qaida, sadly, are regrouping in Afghanistan, and we know for sure Pakistan, the neighboring country, is increasingly unstable. In fact, the strongest military on Earth is apparently so overstretched at this moment, the administration can't even find a handful of transport helicopters to help the desperately needed people of Darfur with the U.N. peacekeeping force.

How long will we stand by this failed foreign policy, this disaster in Iraq, at such a high cost in human lives, dollars, reputation, and national security? We are hearing once again that we are seeing progress in Iraq. How many times have we heard this story? At least for 5 years--from the beginning, from Vice President Cheney's rosy scenario of the troops being greeted with parades and arms laden with flowers to welcome them to Iraq, something that unfortunately did not occur--until the present time, when the so-called surge has turned everything around. And yet 150,000 American lives are still at risk this morning, this afternoon, and this evening in Iraq.

The entire point of the surge was to carve out political space for the Iraqi political leadership. They haven't used the time; they haven't used the surge for that to happen. Does anyone honestly believe we are closer to the day that the Iraqis will take responsibility for their own future? They will if this passes, because they will know our days are numbered in Iraq. We are not going to be there for 25, 50, or 1,000 years. That is not fair to our soldiers; it is not fair to America.

This administration has no strategy beyond ``stay the course'' until January 20, 2009. We in Congress have a responsibility to change direction. Our responsibility is for those soldiers and their families, it is for those guardsmen and their families, it is for everyone risking their life today in Iraq. They need to come home. And when they come home, we know that we have our hands full.

They come home with serious problems. The suicide rate among soldiers is at a record high. It is even higher among Guardsmen who are activated to serve. Post-traumatic stress disorders of years gone by intensify in the returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

We know those who suffered serious injuries--amputations, traumatic brain injury--are going to need our help for a long time to come. This administration has shortchanged the Veterans' Administration. When we begged them to put in the billions of dollars necessary to keep our promise to these veterans and those from other wars, they said they did not need it. Then, of course, they were proven wrong.

We continued to put billions of dollars into the Veterans' Administration, and we should and we will for the future, trying to pay the long-term costs of this war, a heavy cost that future generations will carry. And those on the other side say: Well, let's just let this go for another 11 months. Let's see how this all works out, another 11 months of returning veterans, returning wounded, another 11 months of more responsibility to future generations.

Staying with the failed strategy is no strategy at all. Changing course in Iraq is long overdue. Quite simply, we cannot give this administration another blank check because we know what they are going to do with it. They are going to continue this policy as we see more and more American soldiers in harm's way. The bill before us is reasonable, it is measured, it is a thoughtful effort to put before this administration a new approach, a new policy, and a new direction in Iraq.

Starting to redeploy the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days is a reasonable thing to do. Certainly, many of them will stay there for those specified responsibilities, but as they start to leave, the Iraqis may wake up to the reality that it is their country and their responsibility. The question is no longer whether the surge, or more accurately a significant escalation of troops, has worked. The question is how we can return our focus to the original al- Qaida threat.

Sad to say, 6 years, more than 6 years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. He is still guiding in his way the al-Qaida forces that threaten us in the rest of the world. We need to help countries such as Jordan that have been overrun with Iraqi refugees. We certainly have to understand that a country that has been that friendly to the United States deserves a helping hand, and we have to start to rebuild our international image and reputation.

It is unfortunate to hear people around the world, once our friends, once our allies, once our supporters, so critical of the United States because of the colossal mistake made by the Bush administration with this invasion of Iraq. We have to turn that page, and we cannot wait until January 20, 2009, to do it.

Last year, a New York Times-CBS News poll showed that only 5 percent of Americans trust this President to successfully resolve the Iraq war; 1 out of 20 Americans trust President Bush to resolve this war. Well, I do not believe he will either. I would be with the 95 percent. But Congress has an equally important responsibility to oversee this war as it is fought, to do everything we can to protect our troops and to resolve this war so our troops can come home to the heroes, welcome they richly deserve. We need to step into the leadership void that this White House has left and change directions for our policy in Iraq.

I am going to support this bill to bring an end to this war. I was 1 of 23 who voted against it. Of all of the votes that I have ever cast in this Congress in the House and Senate, I look back with the greatest assurance that was the right vote, the right vote for America. I do not think anything that has transpired since that late October night in 2002 has ever made me waiver in my belief that it was a serious mistake for the United States to give to this President and this administration the authority to begin this war, which has cost us so much over the years.

I believe we have to be careful in our foreign policy. Of course, defend America, that is our first responsibility. But never engage in a war when we cannot understand the consequences that might follow, like this war. It is so much easier to get in a war than it is to get out of one.

Senator Feingold is engaging this Senate in a debate that is long overdue for a change in policy that is long overdue. The Republicans are going to stall, try to avoid the vote, try to speechify us to death, not going to face this vote or a vote on the housing crisis. But that is nothing new. As the majority leader, Senator Reid has said, last year 68 times they initiated a filibuster. That is a brandnew record in the Senate. Before that it was 61 filibusters in 2 years. That was the record. Well, they managed 68 in 1 year.

It shows you what they are up to. They just want to grind us down, slow us down, and make us avoid the issues that count in America. One of those issues is ending this war the right way, and another which will follow is the housing crisis which plagues our economy.

I yield the floor.

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