Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Mark Dayton today asked tough questions of top government officials about the slow pace of reconstruction in Iraq. At a public hearing of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Dayton pressed witnesses to explain the lack of progress, citing a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The report stated that the number of Iraqi citizens with access to clean water has decreased—from approximately 50 percent to 32 percent—since the war in Iraq began. Dayton also cited the report’s finding that Iraqi citizens currently live on just 3.7 hours of electricity per day, less than in 2003.

The witnesses at the hearing were: Claude Bolton, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Training; Major General Ronald L. Johnson, Deputy Commanding General of the Army Corps of Engineers; and Stuart Bowen, Jr., Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Below is an excerpt of Senator Dayton’s statement from the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“As I have said before, I’ll tell you my motivation isn’t politics. I was in Camp Shelby in Mississippi 10 days ago, with 2,600 Minnesotans who are being trained to go over to Iraq. I looked at those faces, and I thought ‘Some of them are probably not going to come back. Some of them will probably die over there. Some of them will come back without limbs.’ And those will be Republicans, Democrats, Independents, it doesn’t matter who they are. They are Americans.

“I was in Iraq with the Ranking Member, the Chairman, and other members of this Committee, in July of 2003. It was 115 degrees every day. With no electricity that means no air conditioning, no refrigeration, no running water and sanitation in some places. And does that fuel the insurgency? Does that mean, as I read in the Washington Post today, that some group of Americans will go out on a convoy 200 yards away from their base camp and get blown up and die? That these things don’t matter? They do! So, when I hear nothing but apologies for this stuff, and glossing over it—and then I’m accused of playing politics when I raised the questions— I find it deeply, deeply offensive.”

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