Mr. Speaker, I have spoken many times from this podium, over 130 times actually, about the moral imperative of bringing our troops home from Iraq. With sectarian strife reaching a bloody, violent high in Iraq last week, it is clear that our military presence is doing more harm than good. But for many of our Iraq veterans, even an immediate end to the occupation would be too late to spare them a possible lifetime of physical and psychological damage.

Much is made, and with good reason, of the physical wounds suffered in combat, but even those who return home physically unharmed often face terrifying demons. Even the toughest, bravest and best trained soldiers are not immune to devastating trauma, the result of daily exposure to danger and unspeakable carnage. These demons must be addressed, and they must be addressed medically in order for many soldiers to return to normal, productive lives.

But the Washington Post reports today that not enough veterans are getting the mental health care they need. One-third of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are seeking mental health services, and the great majority of those who are diagnosed with psychiatric problems are going untreated.

It is a budget problem and it is a diagnostic problem. Given the nature of the war in Iraq, we must adjust the official standards for what constitutes trauma and, thus, what qualifies veterans for subsidized treatment.

Because the combat danger in Iraq is anywhere and everywhere, many, many of our troops are exposed to conditions that lead to mental distress. As one psychiatrist at Walter Reed explained, ``There is no front line in Iraq, and everyone in a convoy is a target.'' Steve Robinson, head of the National Gulf War Research Center, told the Post that there are few sanctuaries in Iraq. ``Every place,'' he said, ``is a war zone.''

Meanwhile, it seems the Department of Veterans Affairs is poorly equipped to deal with this situation. Today's Washington Post article cites budget constraints and worries that the Department won't be able to handle the huge influx of returning soldiers in need of mental health treatment.

But who caused those budget constraints? Certainly it wasn't our troops in Iraq who foolishly promised that we could fight a quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar war and dole out billions of dollars of tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. It wasn't our troops who twisted arms to pass this Medicare Part D boondoggle, which is subsidizing the drug companies and the insurance interests while leaving seniors to wrestle with a bewildering bureaucracy.

Is there any reason why we couldn't have anticipated an enormous demand for Iraq-related mental health services? Of course there wasn't. Couldn't we have included enough money into the war supplemental bills this body has passed? Couldn't we have sacrificed other budgetary handouts and goodies, the ones that benefit people who haven't offered a fraction of the sacrifice for their country that our Iraq veterans have?

I guess if you assumed that our troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators and if you assumed that we would be in and out of Iraq in a flash, you never got the got to the point where you worried about the mental health of returning veterans.

Once again we see the disastrous, tragic consequences of failed planning and poor execution of this war.

We must do everything we can to help our Iraq veterans cope with their traumas. It is the least our government can do after sending them to war on false pretenses, with insufficient equipment and without an exit strategy.

But as an even more urgent matter, we can ensure that no more soldiers suffer from terrifying nightmares and setbacks and flashbacks by ending this occupation and bringing them home at once.

I have actually presented my four-point plan for a radical shift in our Iraq policy to the President of the United States. This policy includes four major areas:

One, greater multilateral cooperation with our allies in enlisting their help in establishing an interim security force in Iraq;

Two, a diplomatic offensive that recasts our role in Iraq as construction partner, rather than military occupier; this means no permanent bases in Iraq, no American claims on Iraqi oil;

Three, a robust post-conflict reconciliation process with a peace commission established to coordinate talks between the Iraqi factions; and

Four, and most importantly, withdrawal of the U.S. Armed Forces.