Mr. Speaker, for months and months we have been hearing from the Bush administration that the training of Iraqi security forces is going as planned. America will stand down just as soon as Iraq stands up, they said. A milestone which we were assured was just around the corner.

Well, now we know the truth. Not only can they not stand up; they can barely crawl. And when they do crawl, all too often they are fighting each other or U.S. troops.

The Los Angeles Times published a shocking report over the weekend about the violence and corruption that is permeating the Iraqi police. According to the Times, we are talking about ``the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers, and participation in insurgent bombings .....

``Officers have beaten prisoners to death. They have been involved in kidnapping rings, sold thousands of stolen and forged Iraqi passports, and passed along vital information to insurgents...... ''

In one Baghdad neighborhood known as a militia stronghold, police tortured detainees with electricity and beatings.

I hasten to add, Mr. Speaker, that the United States and its military have no moral authority to combat such gruesome tactics. Why? Because the right to torture prisoners of war, indeed, the exhortation to torture them, was the official policy of our government for several years.

Of course, the minimum requirement of a functioning society in Iraq will be some kind of trustworthy law enforcement system. But with insurgents and militia groups having infiltrated the police, Iraqi citizens have absolutely no recourse, no legitimate authority committed to their safety and their security.

Another recent article, this one from the Washington Post, tells of a Baghdad resident who dialed the Iraqi equivalent of 911 after a Shiite militia, called the Mahdi Army, firebombed a local mosque. The call went through to the ministry of interior, which is allied with the Shiia and its militias. The dispatcher told the man that he, the caller, was a terrorist, said the Mahdi Army was just doing its job, and hung up. How is that for freedom on the march?

Mr. Speaker, rather than bringing stability and rule of law to Iraq, it has turned out that we have a chaotic killing field, a hot bed of terror over there. The only law that seems to apply is the law of the jungle. The streets are controlled by thugs and murderers. The Iraqi Government is impotent at best, complicit at worst. They are in a civil war.

The least we can do is remove our soldiers from this inferno. Bringing the troops home will not be a panacea for Iraq, but it will get Americans out of harm's way while we help facilitate the long, arduous process of Iraqi reconstruction and reconciliation.

Iraq cannot be put back together again as long as we persist with a military occupation. Every day that our soldiers are there makes it harder, not easier. Every day that the occupation continues, we move further away from, not closer to, the kind of democratic society President Bush says he wants in Iraq.

Bring the troops home. It is the right thing to do for America, and it may be Iraq's only hope for peace and stability.