Mr. Speaker, on October 10, 2002, despite the objections of 133 Members, myself included, this body, the House of Representatives, voted to give the President of the United States the authority to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq.

If we had the information on that day that we have now, I wonder how many votes the war resolution would have garnered. If we had known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; if we had known that the President was hell bent on going to war no matter what, regardless of the intelligence, with or without the U.N.'s blessing; if we had known that we would have still been occupying Iraq nearly 4 years later; if we had known that our occupation would give rise to a violent insurgency, sectarian strife, and all-out civil war; if we had known that the cost of this war would approach $.5 trillion; if we had known that more than 2,550 brave Americans would never come home and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians would be killed for the sake of their so-called liberation; if we had known of the atrocities and constitutional desecrations that would be committed in the name of war, from Abu Ghraib to domestic spying to Guantanamo Bay.

Along with many of my colleagues, I raised these concerns at the time. We were vocal critics of the war before we even knew what a debacle it would become. But our objections were ignored and our voices drowned out by a steady drumbeat of misinformation coming from the administration and its allies. They raised the specter of a mushroom cloud in the chilling and disingenuous words of Condoleezza Rice. They insisted that the Iraqi people would greet us as liberators. They claimed that the war would be a cakewalk, with minimal cost of lives and taxpayer dollars. They assured us that the Iraq invasion would spread freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East, an assertion that has been proven tragically wrong by the recent hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. Anyone who disagreed with this view of the Iraq occupation had his or her loyalty of America called into question.

Today the American people know the truth, that those of us who seemed like lonely dissenters were right all along. The American people agree that it is time to find a way out of Iraq, to end this occupation, because they know you cannot win an occupation.

Our troops have been put in an impossible position without the proper training or equipment. They are being asked to carry out an open-ended occupation of a country wracked with centuries-old religious conflict and few democratic conditions on which to fall back. Moreover, this occupation has no legitimacy whatsoever, having never been authorized or ratified by the United States Congress.

So today I introduced the Iraq War Powers Repeal Act of 2006. It would reverse the fateful decision of nearly 4 years ago and allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority on matters of war and peace. It would strip from the President the powers he has shamelessly abused. From there we can and we must end this occupation, while using diplomacy, humanitarian and peacekeeping tools to help Iraq achieve long-term security and stability. But we must return Iraq to the Iraqis and return our brave soldiers to their families here at home, who anxiously await their return.