The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S12327-S12330 on Sept. 28, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION
Mr. LEVIN. I, again, thank Senator Salazar.
Mr. WARNER. If I might ask my colleague, I think it is the intention of the leadership that this bill--I believe it is in the order--will be brought up again on Monday, with the hope and expectation that we will complete the bill during the course of business on Monday.
Mr. LEVIN. The Senator is correct. I think the unanimous consent agreement actually provides that all votes remaining on this bill begin at approximately 5:30. That is the expectation. And we again thank everybody who was involved in working out that unanimous consent.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after Senator Salazar is recognized, Senator Akaka be recognized at that point for his remarks in morning business.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if I might add, earlier I had the opportunity, as did the chairman, to speak to Senator Akaka. Admiral Roughead served with great distinction in an assignment in Hawaii and is personally known to the distinguished Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Akaka.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado is recognized for 10 minutes.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to speak about the Department of Defense authorization bill, which is a very good bill that has been put together with the leadership of my good friend, Senator Levin and Senator Warner, Senator McCain, and others, who have been involved in this legislation. I come to the floor to speak in support of this legislation, and I am certain when we get to Monday we will have a resounding adoption of this bill, which is so important to our men and women in uniform across the globe.
I will be supporting this legislation, but what will be missing from this legislation is legislation that crafts a new way forward in Iraq, a way forward that transitions our mission from one of combat, policing a sectarian civil war, to one which is a limited mission that I believe both Democrats and Republicans believe we should be able to attain in Iraq.
It is in that context that I was proud to have been one of the participants in crafting the legislation that would have implemented the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. I thank the 17 cosponsors of that legislation for trying to help this body find a way out of the wilderness of Iraq and move forward with a bipartisan approach that would unite our Nation behind an effort that we ultimately agree must result in bringing our troops home from Iraq and maximizing the possibility for us to bring about some level of security in Iraq and defend the strategic interests of the United States in that region and around the world.
But it wasn't only the 17 sponsors we had on the legislation which Senator Alexander and I crafted with the Iraq Study Group, there were also other efforts that were underway in this Chamber during the last week to try to figure out whether there was a common way forward. Senator Levin, Senator Voinovich, Senator Nelson, Senator Collins, and others were very involved in that effort, and it is not over. My hope is that as we move forward in debating what is the foreign policy and national security issue of our time that there may be a way in which we can unite the country in a common way forward.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I want to commend the Senator for the leadership he has taken in this area. I had the opportunity to work with the Senator. As a matter of fact, one of the amendments we jointly worked on eventually became law in the appropriations cycle that required Ambassador Crocker to come before the Senate, General Petraeus to come before the Senate, and the President to make a report to the Nation.
We also created the Jones Commission. All of these matters had the Senator's support all along, and I wish to say that the Senator has been absolutely tireless in his efforts to try to help the Senate do the necessary oversight on this situation.
While we have not, in this current legislation, specific things--the Senator from Michigan brought up an amendment which failed. It should not be looked at as a failure. The Senate is doing oversight. The Senate will continue every single day to give oversight on this situation. But we also have to be respectful to the Constitution, which delegates very carefully the responsibilities of the legislative branch, i.e. the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that of the President in his role as Commander in Chief, where specifically it is entrusted to the President to decide the strategy and the mission, and the Senate and the House are primarily responsible for the authorization and appropriation of funds.
But it does not relieve in any way the obligation of this body to watch what is taking place in Iraq, to give our best thought and counsel to the executive branch--namely, the President--to try to bring about an achievement of the basic goals of a free and sovereign and stable Iraq, which hopefully someday can join the other nations of the world, particularly as it relates to the ongoing war with those who are termed ``terrorists,'' for lack of a better term, who are challenging our respective countries, whether it is the United States or other nations in the world.
So I just wanted to thank the Senator for his leadership. Senator Salazar has done a marvelous job.
Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Virginia, and I will always remember my very first trip into that war-torn country of Iraq was a trip that was led by Senator Warner and Senator Levin. It was the Levin-Warner codel that went into Iraq to try to learn more about what was happening in that country, to figure out a way in which we might be able to move forward.
The Senator from Virginia is correct. I think the debate in this Chamber and in this country has been helpful to bring about a better understanding and to deliver a message to the Iraqi people that we do not have an open-ended commitment. I was proud to have been a part of supporting the Senator from Virginia as we moved forward with the legislation that included the benchmarks that are now part of our national policy and that also required the General Accounting Office to report on those benchmarks and created the Jones Commission to give us an independent assessment of the security situation on the ground. So I think there has been progress that has been made.
But I would also respond to my good friend from Virginia, for whom I have the greatest amount of respect, that it is important this debate be one which we continue to have because it is the central foreign policy and national security issue of our time. Even though we all understand we live under a constitution which has divided the powers between three branches of Government, we all know from the jurisprudence of our past that the power of the President is, frankly, at its highest when, in fact, there is a relationship where he and the Congress agree on a way forward.
What we have seen over the last several years is a great division in this country in terms of where many of the members of the legislative branch of our Government is and where the President is. So I think our continuing efforts to try to find a way forward in a way that the Senator from Michigan, Mr. Levin, and others have been trying to do is something we should continue to do. I do not believe it is something that at this point in time we should give up on because this issue is too important. It is too important for the 170,000 men and women currently serving in Iraq. It is too important to their families in the United States. It is too important to the fiscal consequence this war is bringing upon the United States.
So I am hopeful the dialogue that has taken place in the Senate over the last week with different groups of Senators trying to find a common way forward ultimately will get us to success.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I assure my colleague that I fully anticipate we will have further debates on the very issues that have been of concern to my colleague from Colorado during the Defense appropriations bill, which we will be following up with at the conclusion of work on this bill.
But I point out that it has not all been lost. I will give the Senator specific examples. A number of us have indicated a desire to have some of our troops brought home as early as possible, and the President initiated, after testimony by General Petraeus, the steps to start bringing our troops home, some elements of them, before Christmas. He laid out a program for reduction in forces with an objective to be at what we call a presurge force level by late next spring or very early next summer. So the voices in this Chamber are being heard.
I know personally that the President is quite anxious, more so than most, to bring our forces home, but only after achievement of the goals for which heavy sacrifices have been made. We are now crossing 3,800 who have been lost and many others wounded. We must be certain that great sacrifice was not in vain.
I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague.
Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield for a quick reaction?
Mr. SALAZAR. Absolutely.
Mr. LEVIN. There has been no one in this Chamber who has worked harder to try to bring enough Senators together to pass a resolution calling for a change of course in Iraq than Senator Salazar. He has been absolutely intrepid. There is not a day that goes by when he is not working with colleagues looking for a path forward where we can accomplish a change in course, where we could not only begin the transition to a new mission--which is out of a civil war, out of the middle of this sectarian conflict--but also where there is, at a minimum, a goal set for the completion of that transition to those more limited ambitions which would be supportive of Iraq, supportive of their army, but part of a change of policy which would force the Iraqis to finally take responsibility for their own country.
I just want to commend the Senator for his insistence. He has a theme, and it is the correct theme, which is that a bipartisan solution and resolution is absolutely critical in foreign policy, and particularly in war. There is no partisan position in war which is right for the Nation. It is always in the middle of a security conflict--as we are in the middle of now--where there has to be a bipartisan approach. The Senator from Colorado has pled for it, called for it, worked for it, and has asserted his vast energy to try to achieve it.
We haven't accomplished it--it being 60 votes. The rules of the Senate are that it takes 60 votes to adopt something like this, and the Iraq resolutions are operating under that rule, so we need to get the 60. It is not because of a lack of effort on the part of many of us, but surely Senator Salazar is at the head of that list. The Senator from Colorado has put forth such Herculean efforts to get to that mass of 60 who could agree on a formula that could represent those goals--to begin the reduction of our troops and the transition to the new missions, which are not in the middle of sectarian conflict but supportive missions--and to have a binding period under Levin-Reed, and then a goal under some permutation of Levin-Reed to accomplish that in 9 months.
So I wanted to add my thanks to those of the Senator from Virginia, who very appropriately interrupted the Senator from Colorado, and I join in that interruption to thank him and to agree that the Senator from Virginia has been very much a part of an effort in this Senate to move this process forward over the last few years. And I want to also add my thanks to those of the Senator from Colorado of my dear friend from Virginia because he has played an important role to the extent that we have been able to move this process forward. He has been in the middle of that movement.
It is not nearly enough from my perspective. We have obviously tried to get to Levin-Reed, which would change the course in Iraq, and we haven't done that yet. But we are going to keep plugging away because it is critically important that we succeed in Iraq and that we recognize that the only way we are going to succeed is if the Iraqi Government works out the political differences among them because there is no military solution. And the only hope of success is if the Iraqi leaders finally do what they promised to do a year ago, which is to work out their political differences.
If I could take one more minute of the Senator's time, there is a book out recently about President Bush. I am trying to remember the name of the author, who had great access to the President. In this book, in the appendix, there is a reference to the fact that I had previously told the President that I and many others had taken the message to the Iraqi leaders that they have to change, they have to work out their political differences; that the American people's patience has run out. The President was asked to refer to that and also to the debate on the Senate floor.
What was his reaction to these efforts to change course in Iraq and to tell the Iraqi leaders that it is their responsibility?
The President's response is interesting. He said, accurately, that when I told him this report, that a number of us go to Iraq repeatedly and tell the Iraqi leaders: You have lost the support of the American people. You guys better get your political act together because, folks, we are going to begin to reduce troops here. We can't save you from yourself--what was the President's response when I told him of that? He said:
Thank you, Senator. Thank you for carrying that message to the Iraqi troops. They've got to hear that.
It was a positive response--not just to the message which many of us have carried, including the Senator from Virginia, the Senator from Colorado, and a dozen other Senators--but he thanked me and others for telling the Iraqi leaders what he, I think it is clear, would like to tell them himself.
(Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumed the Chair.)
Mr. WARNER. I remember being in the Cabinet room when that dialog took place.
Mr. LEVIN. And he confirmed it in this book.
Mr. WARNER. Interesting, but it is important we constantly reiterate the message there is no military solution. As you well know in all the hearings of the Armed Services Committee, every uniformed officer has told us that straightforwardly. They are carrying out their orders from the President, but they are reminding us, the Congress and others, there is no military solution. The solution has to come by reconciliation amongst the Iraqi people, and it is incumbent among the current leadership to exercise their sovereign rights to do so.
I think we have generously taken up the time of our colleague.
Mr. LEVIN. If I can take 10 more seconds, I thank the Presiding Officer, Senator Klobuchar, for helping me out with the name of the author. It is Robert Draper.
Mr. SALAZAR. I thank my colleagues for the colloquy. I do think this debate has had an impact. I do remember well the conversations we had in the room with the President after we came back from Iraq. There was a conversation where the President said that our sending this message to the Iraqi people was a very important message, and certainly Senator Levin and Senator Warner have been a part of making sure that message is, in fact, heard.
Madam President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business. Senators are allowed to speak up to 10 minutes each.
Mr. SALAZAR. I ask unanimous consent that I be given 10 more minutes to conclude my remarks on the Iraq Study Group.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, echoing off the comments of my colleagues, I go back to the Iraq Study Group--some of the best that we have in America--and the vision they set out in their recommendations, after they spent a year, saying: We have this huge problem in Iraq. What is the best way that we move forward?
They came up with 79 recommendations on how we ought to move forward in Iraq. The heart of the recommendations is set forth in a letter that was sent as part of that report by Congressman Hamilton and former Secretary James Baker. What they said is this, and I quote from the report language that is also included in our legislation. It says:
Our political leaders must build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a lengthy and costly war. Our country deserves a debate that prizes substance over rhetoric and a policy that is adequately funded and sustainable. The President and Congress must work together. Our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people in order to win their support.
It was in that vein that Democrats and Republicans came together to cosponsor the legislation on the implementation of the recommendations. I thank them for having stood up, in the sponsorship of the legislation. They include Senator Mark Pryor from Arkansas, Senator Bob Casey from Pennsylvania, Senator Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas, Senator Bill Nelson from Florida, Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri, Senator Kent Conrad from North Dakota, Senator Tom Carper from Delaware. These are all good Senators who want to figure out a way forward in this issue that befuddles America today. But it wasn't just Democrats who came with us to say we have to find a new way forward in Iraq. There were Republicans who came forward and joined us. We saw Senator Lamar Alexander coming to the floor time and time again, wanting to fashion a new way forward. He was joined by Senator Bob Bennett, Senator Judd Gregg, Senator Susan Collins, Senator John Sununu, Senator Pete Domenici, Senator Arlen Specter, and Senator Norm Coleman. At the end of the day, there were 17 cosponsors for this legislation which only 10 months ago everybody would have come together and said this is the right way to go.
We remember those days before the Iraq Study Group recommendations came out last December when it was highly anticipated. The President even delayed a speech and his own set of recommendations until he heard from the Iraq Study Group. Most people said this is a very thoughtful and good way forward.
I wanted to come to the floor today and say a few things about the legislation. It is legislation which would have set forth a new state of law with respect to Iraq. Yes, we have had a tough time in the Congress, coming forward with legislation that can muster 60 votes in the Senate, so not much legislation has been passed with respect to creating a new direction for Iraq. Our legislation would have made it a statement of policy--which in essence is a statement of law. This is not a sense of the Senate, this is a statement of law. This would have been the law of the land with respect to the U.S. efforts concerning Iraq. I wish to review a few provisions of the legislation.
The first of those has to do with the sense of the Congress that we move forward with a major diplomatic surge in the region. That is a sense of Congress because, appropriately, that belongs with the President and with the State Department, in terms of what we have to do to reassert the international involvement to bring about a long-term solution to the problem we face in Iraq. Similar to most of my colleagues who traveled to Iraq in the last few years, I always wonder: Where are the neighbors? Why aren't they more involved in dealing with the issue that is so vitally important to the populations of all those in the Middle East? Where are they?
Some of them are sitting on their hands. Some of them who are not sitting on their hands are actually helping foment the violence we see in Iraq today, whether that is Iran or whether that is Syria. What we need to do is have a diplomatic surge to move forward to help bring the world together to find a solution that will work to bring about stability in Iraq. We set forth that as a sense of the Senate.
In addition to the sense of the Senate, which has some 24 measures, all of which were taken out of the Iraq Study Group recommendations, we also include the statements of law. Those are the statements of policy. The first and most important of those statements of policy is in section 5 of the legislation. That section says ``it shall be''--``it shall be.'' Not it could be, not it might be, not it ought to be considered. It says: It shall be the policy of the United States to move forward to a changed mission--to a changed mission from one of combat to one of training, equipping, advising and providing support for security and military forces in Iraq and to support counterterrorism operations in the country of Iraq. So we do a mission change with this legislation.
Next, also the statement of law, we call for the strengthening of the U.S. military. I think there is a broad, bipartisan consensus that what has happened in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan is that our military has been strained. Our military has been strained because of the humongous effort that has gone into prosecuting the war in those two places over the last 5\1/2\ years. So we, in our legislation, follow the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, requiring the strengthening of the U.S. military.
Third, a statement of policy with respect to the police and criminal justice system in Iraq. On several of the codels I have taken to Iraq, one of the things that is absolutely phenomenal to me is that there is not a criminal justice system that today is working in Iraq. So the bad guys, when they are caught--what ends up happening to them? Are they prosecuted in the way that we would prosecute bad guys here in the United States of America? Is there a system of courts that is up and functioning? The police system, especially the national police in Iraq, is dysfunctional. It is infiltrated by members of the militias. Those are some of the findings of the GAO, as well as some of the findings in General Jones' recent report. So one of the things we require as a statement of policy is that the police and criminal justice system in Iraq be transformed.
Also in our legislation we required the statement of policy on the oil sector in Iraq. We know the Iraqis need to come up with a reformation of their law and with changes to their law that will require the equitable distribution of the oil resources in Iraq.
There are other measures here that are set forth in the legislation. One that I will refer to briefly has to do with conditions and the support of the United States in Iraq. This is section 11 of our legislation. In section 11 of our legislation we say: It shall be the policy of the United States to condition continued U.S. political, military and economic support for Iraq upon the demonstration by the Government of Iraq of sufficient political will and the making of substantial progress toward achieving the milestones that are described in that legislation. So the conditioning of the U.S. support for Iraq is based on them taking on the responsibility for achieving the milestones that were set forth in the Iraq Study Group's recommendation.
Those are major changes. I believe this legislation--although there is other legislation here that I have supported, including legislation that called for timelines with respect to the reduction of troops--this legislation also is very good and very substantive legislation.
Let me essentially sum up what this legislation would have done. The first thing it would have done is call for the mission change. I think more and more I hear a chorus rising in the Senate, in many of the pieces of legislation that we have seen, that it is time for us to change the mission from one of combat to one of assistance; from one of combat, where we are policing a sectarian civil war today, to one of training and equipping and counterterrorism within Iraq. That change of mission is something we ought to be able to accomplish in the Senate.
Second, the diplomatic surge. We know without the diplomatic surge we are not going to be able to succeed in Iraq. We know we need to have the neighborhood, the region, much more involved in trying to bring about stability in Iraq.
Third, the conditioning of the U.S. support on progress and on the milestones set forth there.
I think, regarding these broad agreements, we need to keep pressuring the Iraqis to move forward to adopt those, not only to adopt, implement the milestones and benchmarks they themselves came up with.
Let me conclude by saying this debate is not yet over. There are still groups, numbers of Senators, who are trying to figure out whether we can bring enough of a bipartisan way forward that will help us change the mission in Iraq. I look forward to working with both my Democratic and Republican colleagues, seeing whether we can in fact achieve that end.
At the end of the day, there is a lot at stake in this issue for all of us in America. When one thinks, first of all, about the fact that we are approaching 4,000 of our best, our bravest men and women who have died in this war in Iraq, and we know as a fact we have 30,000 American men and women in uniform who have been grievously injured in that nation; we know the fiscal consequence of this war is now $750 billion and rising--expectations now are that the war costs will be at $1 trillion--we as a Senate and Congress have a responsibility, in my view, to address this issue.
I hope, in the days ahead, as we address the Defense appropriations legislation, as well as the supplemental which the President has requested--additional money for the ongoing effort, the so-called bridge funding--that we can revisit this issue and see whether we can come together to try to forge a new way forward in Iraq.
I yield the floor.
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