Mr. Speaker, there haven't been any front-page articles in the newspapers about it. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report haven't covered it either. And the big news channels are pretty much silent.
But the fact that a group of courageous Iraqi women came to the United States last week to tell their stories is nothing short of remarkable. To get here, they had to brave the treacherous 500-mile stretch from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. Then they had to clear U.S. Customs, no easy undertaking, and fly from Amman to New York.
The stories they shared when they visited the Halls of Congress were both strikingly sad and extremely valuable. But you wouldn't know it unless you had met with them personally, because the American media has hardly reported a single word they said.
Too often in this Chamber we have heard that the media isn't doing a good enough job of covering the war in Iraq. Well, you know what? They are right. The media isn't doing a good enough job. The media isn't reporting about the destroyed hospitals, roads and schools, not to mention the shattered lives, shattered lives throughout Iraq.
The media isn't talking about the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians who have been killed over the last 3 years of war and occupation. And they are not telling us that some 50 percent of those killed have been women and children, or that thousands of Iraqis have been unnecessarily detained or have gone missing.
But the women who flew from Amman to New York talked about what is really happening in Iraq, about some of the burdens they bear every day as a result of our politics there.
One of these women was Faiza Al-Araji, a mother of three from Baghdad. Faiza's son, Khalid, was a student at Baghdad University. Last year he was arrested by officials from Iraq's Ministry of the Interior for no apparent reason. He was never charged with a crime and his family was not told about his whereabouts for 3 days. To secure her son's release after Khalid was finally allowed to call home, Faiza had to pay a ransom to the Ministry of the Interior.
As if she hadn't already suffered enough, last year, gunmen put a rifle to Faiza's head and stole her car. When she told a group of American soldiers what had just happened, they told her, There is nothing we can do. When she told her story to the Iraqi police, they told her, I am sorry, my sister, but there is nothing we can do.
Mr. Speaker, we have nearly 150,000 soldiers stationed throughout Iraq, many of them in Baghdad. If they can't keep the Iraqi people safe, and if the local police can't keep them safe, why are we there?
After going through these ordeals, Faiza and her family moved to Amman, Jordan where it is safer. She has dedicated herself to telling the truths about Iraq, the truths that our media isn't telling us.
Sadly, what Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi women's delegation have revealed is what many of us have suspected for months, that an Iraqi civil war isn't imminent; it is going on right now, right before our very eyes. Shiite and Sunni militias have been fighting each other and targeting innocent civilians for months. Well more than 2,000 people have been killed since the bombing of the famed gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra last month. And the situation will not get better until we bring our troops home.
Mr. Speaker, how many more innocent Iraqis, mothers, fathers and their children need to be killed before we realize that our policies in Iraq are not working?
How many more of our troops have to be killed before we bring them home?
Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi delegation know that it is time for our troops to leave. Nearly two-thirds of the American people share this belief. It is time for Congress to catch up.
Windows Media Player (version 7.1 or higher)
