Mr. Speaker, a few days ago, President Bush said that we had reached a turning point in Iraq. Given that he declared ``Mission Accomplished'' and the end of major combat operations more than 3 years ago, I would say it is about time we reached a turning point.

But as the Washington Post pointed out, this kind of turning point language is pretty commonplace for the President. There have been many milestones. There have been many turning points from this White House, even a turning point in the history of freedom over the last several years. The President should ask the people who risk their lives, their bodies, and their minds every day, just walking down the streets of Baghdad, if they see a turning point. We should ask the Iraqi citizens how they see it.

The day after the President's last attempt at spin, more than 30 Iraqis were murdered in violent attacks. They joined tens of thousands of other innocent civilians, many of them children, who have died for the cause of their so-called ``liberation.'' There are some rumblings now about drawing down our troop levels, but we have heard that before, and I will believe it when I see it, and I will believe it to be real when the President puts forward a plan on how he is going to end this war.

Mr. Speaker, I have yet to hear the President disavow his statement that the decision to bring our troops home will be for future Presidents to decide. I have yet to hear a clear denial from the administration that we have plans to build permanent military bases in Iraq. If there is some kind of reduction in U.S. forces, my fear is that it will be a cosmetic change only, driven more by the political calendar than any kind of strategic consideration, ultimately making the troops left in Iraq even more vulnerable than they are now.

The answer is not to get down to 100,000 troops by the end of the year, because incremental steps are not enough. There must be a plan to immediately end this occupation and bring every last one of our soldiers home. The longer they stay, the longer suicide bombings will persist, because our very presence is one of the principal causes of the violence.

That is not our soldiers' fault. Of course, it isn't. They have performed their services faithfully and courageously. It is their civilian supervisors who have miscalculated at every turn. It is the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense who refuse to see that our military presence is fueling the rage of the insurgency, intensifying hatred for America, and stoking the fires of civil war.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for an entirely new approach to Iraq. It is time for the United States to show real global leadership by helping assemble a multinational security force to help keep Iraq stable in the short term. It is time to help establish an international peace commission under the auspices of the U.N. to begin the Iraq postwar reconciliation process. It is time to turn Iraq over to the Iraqi people. It is time to stop being Iraq's military occupier and start being Iraq's reconstruction partner. It is time to rebuild the country we have torn apart and to do it with an emphasis on transparency and accountability and not on padding Halliburton's profit margins.

But before we take these steps, before we do anything, we must end the war and bring our troops home to their families, where they belong. That is the turning point that will make a real difference in the Iraq situation.