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Undermining Efforts to Fight Terrorism
House of Representatives - September 25, 2006

Mr. Speaker, we learned yesterday of a new intelligence assessment that confirms what the common sense of the American people concluded some time ago: The war in Iraq has undermined our efforts to fight terrorism.

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The national intelligence estimate says the Iraq war has made terrorism worse on a global scale. The Iraq war has made the world more dangerous. These conclusions come from the agencies and specialists who work to keep America safe by keeping leaders informed of the latest verifiable information.

The intelligence assessment is sobering, but the White House and Republican response is staggering in its total denial of the truth. Faced with newspaper accounts of the new intelligence report in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the White House immediately issued a denial. They went so far as to have their appointees repeat the often-heard misstatement that significant progress is being made in Iraq.

Violence is the only thing that Iraq has more of today. More than 200 people have been killed in Iraq since the weekend, but the President and the Republican surrogates keep saying significant progress is being made.

The Republican idea of keeping America safe is keeping America in the dark, unaware of the truth Republicans have been told behind closed door. Republicans continue to blindly endorse the President's Iraq war because those are the marching orders from the White House. There is no independence from the President. Republicans in the House do exactly as they are instructed.

So when the intelligence community tells Republican leaders the Iraq war is spreading terrorism, the White House tells the Republicans to say something else. U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying in the middle of a civil war, yet the Republicans mechanically recite the same old White House rhetoric.

The only thing that will help America become safer is to face the truth. The Iraq war has made the world more dangerous. Only Republicans disagree with that truth.

The Republican party in power denies the facts of the intelligence community; and they keep telling America you are safer, you are safer. The facts prove the President has been wrong about Iraq all along. The facts prove the President could have changed course but instead chose to keep U.S. soldiers in harm's way and make the world a more dangerous place. And the facts prove the Republican Party abandoned the American people in favor of misleading statements, failed foreign policy, and a President who will stay his own course when America is off course.

America is not safer when the President has a Republican Congress willing to accept White House press releases instead of cold hard assessments from 16 intelligence agencies of the United States Government. America is not safer when the Republican Party's principal weapon in the war on terror is misleading press releases denying our own intelligence community. But that is what the Republicans would have you believe. Republicans think a press release is more important to their future than an intelligence plan that demands we confront Iraq as it really is.

Republicans had the power to change course and work with the Democrats to produce a national plan on the crisis in Iraq. They simply refuse. They go it alone. Republicans had the power to develop a plan for Iraq that was based on facts, not the President's speeches, but they refused. Jack Murtha, Ike Skelton, many on our side have offered them alternatives.

The world today is more dangerous, and Republicans will not even accept their own intelligence assessments.

The American people learned two important pieces of information over the weekend: The Iraq war has made the world more dangerous, and the Republican Party is not willing to act on that intelligence. They are not protecting the American people. They are protecting their own hold on power by denying the horrible mistake that they have made. They will not change course because that would require them to say, well, you know, we did the wrong thing when we let the whole Army go, when we let Abu Ghraib get out of hand. They won't admit that they have made us less safe.