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.
“IRAQ” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S5262-S5264 on April 30, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
IRAQ
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, speaking on the same matters addressed by both the majority and minority leader, I remind our colleagues that last week this body passed by a very narrow margin what amounts to a strategy for defeat in Iraq. This course of action was not a surprise. After all, the majority leader had announced to the world that the war was lost. This, of course, was news to people in Iraq, our soldiers in the field included.
For example, SGT George Turkovich was quoted in the Las Vegas Review-
Journal, saying:
We're not losing this war. Unfortunately, politics has taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of engagement. This is a guerilla war that we're fighting, and they're going to tie our hands. So it does make it a lot harder for us to fight the enemy, but we're not losing this war.
This is from a 24-year-old a half a world away.
I suspect the announcement that we had lost the war was also a surprise to General Petraeus. Remember, we confirmed him unanimously in this body. We knew what his strategy was. He has testified about it when he came here for his confirmation hearings. In fact, he had written a book about it.
Many in this body, I fear, have forgotten what he said. In a Pentagon briefing, last week, when he returned from the theater to brief us on the status of the conflict, he reminded us:
[A]s I noted during my confirmation hearing, military action is necessary but not [a] sufficient [condition]. We can provide the Iraqis an opportunity, but they will have to exploit it.
Now, I mention this because the majority leader and others have quoted General Petraeus as saying this war can only be won politically, not militarily. What General Petraeus actually said was: ``Military action is necessary but not sufficient.'' He has pointed out over and over that the political compromises and decisions and agreements that need to be made cannot be made in the context of the violence and instability that exists in Iraq today.
Let me quote him again. He said:
The situation is, in short, exceedingly challenging, though as I will briefly explain, there has been progress in several areas in recent months despite the sensational attacks by al Qaeda, which have, of course, been significant blows to our effort and which cause psychological damage that is typically even greater than their physical damage.
He said:
And I again note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.
He concluded by saying:
Success will take continued commitment, perseverance and sacrifice, all to make possible an opportunity for the all-important Iraqi political actions that are the key to long-term solutions to Iraq's many problems. Because we are operating in new areas and challenging elements in those areas, this effort may get harder before it gets easier.
He predicted this. He said, likely we will have more casualties as we ramp up our efforts because the fighting will be more intense, and that is a necessary precondition to creating the peace and stability which we hope to achieve by this increase in our activity.
So it is mystifying to me those on the other side of the aisle can say we should withdraw now because the war is lost and that the only solution is a political solution, but we are going to pass a bill denying the President and General Petraeus, the State Department, and others much of the economic reconstruction funding we need to achieve the political solution. As the majority leader noted, there is still much to be done in Iraq, other than on the military side of the equation, just getting things up and running there.
But this is the bill sent to the President, after months of delay, including 2 weeks when the other body was in recess. There, of course, was no recess for our troops, nor for the Pentagon, which, according to Secretary Gates, in an April 11 letter to Congress, told of the disruptions already taking place.
Let me describe what some of those disruptions from this lack of funding are: reducing Army quality-of-life initiatives, including routine upgrade of barracks and other facilities; reducing the repair and maintenance of equipment necessary for deployment training; curtailing the training of Army Guard and Reserve units within the United States, reducing their readiness levels.
This may be just the beginning of what is to come if this supplemental funding is further delayed. The National Journal, this morning, reported: ``Democrats have set a Memorial Day deadline to send Bush a reconstructed supplemental.'' Memorial Day--a month away. Why the further delay, when everyone knows the detriment to the training and equipment availability for our troops that has resulted already from the delay in funding? This would be dangerously irresponsible, and the impacts will get only more significant over time.
Here are some of the additional results that will occur: reducing the pace of equipment overhaul work at Army depots, which will likely exacerbate the equipment availability problems facing stateside units; curtailing training rotations for Brigade Combat Teams currently scheduled for overseas deployment. Such a step would likely require the further extension of currently deployed forces until their replacements were judged ready for deployment. The self-fulfilling prophecy that would result from the lack of funding is: Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we are going to have our troops have to be in theater a longer period of time. Answer: Yes, if you continue to deny the funding, that is exactly what will happen.
It will also delay the acceleration of additional modularized Army brigades necessary to expand the Army unit rotational pool and reduce the stress on existing units. This must be what GEN Peter Schoomaker, who is the Army Chief of Staff, meant when he stated, the Army ``will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our Soldiers and their families.''
These political delays are keeping much needed lifesaving equipment out of the hands of our troops as well. I supported the amendment offered by the senior Senator from Delaware to add an additional $1.5 billion for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the so-called MRAPs, which, on top of the $1.83 billion for the services the President requested, would get these vehicles into the field now. As the senior Senator from Delaware said:
MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to IED attack by as much as 80 percent.
So why would we further delay the funding to get these vehicles into the hands of our troops? Delaying this all the way to Memorial Day simply means further delays in getting this equipment to the troops.
Meanwhile, though we cannot get this funding to the troops, the majority is feverishly at work adding unrequested, nonemergency spending to the bill--all in an apparent effort to try to cobble together enough votes to actually pass the bill, since the underlying surrender date is so unpopular.
The bill includes over $21 billion in unrequested items--$21 billion. Among them is title V, which provides $3.5 billion in emergency agricultural assistance--things such as $60 million for salmon fisheries. The bill also includes provisions such as--and by the way, neither the Senate nor the House put these provisions in the bill; they were added in the conference committee--such as an extension of the Pharmacy Plus program in Wisconsin. Now, I am on the Finance Committee, and we did not consider this in the Finance Committee. It is, obviously, not an emergency, but, apparently, there were some folks from Wisconsin who could be brought along in support of the vote if this was added to the bill.
These provisions have no place in the bill. They should not return in the final bill after the President has exercised his veto tomorrow and the majority decides to get serious and pass legislation which the President can actually sign.
My recommendation to the President, if they are included, is to veto the bill. The military troops should not be forced to carry the pork of Members on their backs. This bill should be vetoed both because of the surrender date and because of the pork. It is time to end wasteful Washington spending, especially when it is being carried on the backs of our troops in an emergency supplemental bill.
I saw the items: the spinach farms, the peanut storage, the tropical fish, bailouts for sugar beets. Let these provisions go through the normal channels. If they have merit, their sponsors should be able to carry the day and get them supported. If not, then we should not be supporting them anyway. But let's not slow down the money for the troops just in the name of some special parochial earmark.
One thing that has been lost, I would add, in the race to enact this strategy for defeat is the consequences for this premature--this setting a deadline for surrender. Remember, this is the first time ever in the middle of a war we would set a date and say: At this time we will be out of there. The message it sends to the enemy is--well, it is unthinkable. But think about the message it sends to the Iraqis who have fought along our side and to our troops and their families. It would be a nightmare for the Iraqi people were we to leave. As President Bush said:
[T]o step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart, and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale.
Do we want to be responsible for that in this body, the mass killings that would result--exactly what we criticized Saddam Hussein for when he was in power? It would not end with an American withdrawal in Iraq, either. As General Anthony Zinni said:
This is no Vietnam or Somalia or those places where you can walk away. If we just pull out, we will find ourselves back in short order.
Failing in Iraq would set back the entire region. The Brookings Institution--no big supporter of the President, I would add--argues, in their study, that:
Iraq appears to have many of the conditions most conducive to spillover because there is a high degree of foreign
``interest'' in Iraq. Ethnic, tribal, and religious troops within Iraq are equally prevalent in neighboring countries and they share many of the same grievances. Iraq has a history of violence with its neighbors, which has fostered desires for vengeance and fomented constant clashes. Iraq also possesses resources that its neighbors covet--oil being the most obvious, but important religious shrines also figure in the mix. There is a high degree of commerce and communication between Iraq and its neighbors, and its borders are porous. All of this suggests that spillover from an Iraqi civil war would tend toward the more dangerous end of the spillover spectrum.
We know Iran and Syria are fostering instability in Iraq. Al-Qaida and Hezbollah are both active there as well. Chaos in Iraq could draw in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi officials have threatened ``massive intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.'' Kurdish succession could well cause Turkish intervention in the region.
Failing in Iraq would be a dramatic setback in the war on terror. Iraq must not be divorced from its context--the struggle between the forces of moderation and extremism in the Muslim world.
Al-Qaida has been in Iraq since before the United States invaded and has dedicated itself to fomenting sectarian violence there. Much of the violence between Shia and Sunni is a result of prodding by al-Qaida, starting primarily with the blowing up of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
Osama bin Laden himself referred to Iraq--I am quoting him--as the
``capital of the Caliphate,'' arguing that ``The most . . . serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War . . . [that] is raging in [Iraq].'' Those are not my words. That is what Osama bin Laden said.
One of the terrorism experts, Peter Bergen, said this:
[U.S. withdrawal] would fit all too neatly into Osama bin Laden's master narrative about American foreign policy. His theme is that America is a paper tiger that cannot tolerate body bags coming home; to back it up, he cites President Ronald Reagan's 1984 withdrawal of United States troops from Lebanon and President Bill Clinton's decision nearly a decade later to pull troops from Somalia. A unilateral pullout from Iraq would only confirm this analysis of American weakness among his jihadist allies.
Failure in Iraq will encourage further attacks against the United States and provide a base from which to plan and train for attacks.
I must remind my friends, if you are going to push this legislation through, the strategy for defeat, you have a responsibility to tell the American people what the consequences will be and to tell them how you would respond. These are the burdens of being in the majority. These are the burdens of making the difficult decisions we make in this body.
I urge my colleagues to work together to develop a supplemental appropriations bill that President Bush can quickly sign, that will get the funding to our troops and enable us to give the strategy a chance to succeed so that the horrible consequences I have described will not be the result of our actions.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
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