Mr. Speaker, if there was any doubt that the Bush administration has it Iraq's policy totally wrong, the actions taken yesterday in both Houses of Congress shattered that notion. In the Senate, 79 Senators voted in favor of an amendment designating the year 2006 as a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty. The amendment also requires the President to provide Congress with a quarterly report detailing United States policies and military operations in Iraq.

And in the House, the Out of Iraq Caucus, led by Ms. Waters, introduced a discharge petition to force the House to openly debate the Homeward Bound legislation. Homeward Bound is the bill introduced by the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie). It is H.J. Res. 55, and it calls for bringing our troops home no later than October 1, 2006. The petition must be signed by 218 Members of Congress and then will force a debate on the floor.

This debate would include 17 hours of open debate, allowing every Member of Congress a chance to offer an amendment or talk about the war in Iraq from their very own perspective. Regardless of where my colleagues stand on the war and regardless of their political affiliation, I urge them to sign onto this discharge petition because we are long overdue for a conversation here on the floor about Iraq. It is a conversation that we need to have because it has been a long time.

Anyone watching at home may remember the last time Congress debated this matter. It was May 25 when I introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill, an amendment asking the President to put together his plans for bringing our troops home and to provide those plans to the appropriate committees in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, 128 Members of this House voted for that amendment, and if the vote were held today, I am sure we would have many more than 128 votes. Of those 128 votes, 5 were Republican, 122 were Democrat, and one was our Independent from Vermont.

Unfortunately, we cannot have that vote again because the Republican leaders in Congress will not allow it. They will not bring important Iraq legislation like the bipartisan Homeward Bound legislation up for debate on the House floor. Think about it, the last time we debated this vitally important issue was nearly 6 months ago, and that was the first time and only time we have talked about it since the beginning of the war.

Since Congress will not have this debate, we have had to resort to taking matters into our own hands. That is why we are working to bring Homeward Bound to the House floor, and that is why 61 of my colleagues joined me in sending a letter to the President last week urging him to make four key policy changes in his position on Iraq.

First, we asked him to engage in greater multilateral cooperation with our allies. We simply cannot keep 160,000 American soldiers in Iraq and hope for the situation to just change for the better because it is our very military presence that is fueling Iraq's growing insurgency.

Instead, the President should actually eat a little crow, admit his mistakes and ask our allies, the same ones we offended in the buildup of the war, to establish a multinational interim security force for Iraq, possibly run by the United Nations or NATO. The U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations would be particularly well suited to managing this task, as a matter of fact.

Second, the U.S. must pursue diplomatic and nonmilitary initiatives. If we seriously want democracy to take hold in the Middle East, then we need to get serious about changing our role from that of Iraq's military occupier to its reconstruction partner.

Instead of sending troops and military equipment to Iraq, let us send teachers, scientists, urban planners, and constitutional experts as a larger diplomatic offensive, one that will allow us to regain our lost national credibility while, at the same time, creating Iraqi jobs and bolstering Iraq's economy.

Third, let us prepare for a robust, postconflict reconciliation process. There is no shortage of national healing that needs to occur in Iraq after nearly 3 years of death and 3 years of destruction. That is why we should encourage an international peace commission to oversee Iraq's postconflict reconciliation. This group would coordinate peace talks between the various factions in Iraq, providing all Iraqis with a sense of ownership and hope over their country's future.

Finally, and most important of all, we must bring our troops home. The human cost of this war has been absolutely staggering. To save lives, end the war and prevent our Treasury from spiraling even further into debt, we need to end this war.