The Iraq War
October 22, 2007
Rep. Maxine Waters [D-CA]: Mr. Speaker, today President Bush requested an additional $46 billion war request. This request is on top of an existing $142 billion request pending from earlier this year.
The President told reporters that the funding was simply for day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He said that the bill provides for basic needs like bullets and body armor, protection against IEDs, and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles.
The President would lead us to believe that there are only two options in Iraq; Congress must either continue to fund the war indefinitely, or we must choose to pull the rug out from under the troops and strand them in the field without body armor and bullets. This, of course, is a ridiculous characterization of our position. We feel that continuing to referee a civil war in Iraq runs counter to our national security interests.
There is no military solution to the war in Iraq no matter how many soldiers, weapons and dollars you dump into the country. Bombs and bullets have not and will not bring us peace in Iraq. I believe there is only one answer to the war in Iraq: a fully funded redeployment of our troops and military contractors.
I think a reasonable Member of Congress would welcome a plan from the President on how we're going to safely leave Iraq, and we would be happy to fund it. But asking us to continue funding, providing funds for the occupation of Iraq until President Bush decides to change course is tantamount to asking us to just continue to support the war.
The choice is clear; it is time to face the facts: We either provide funds to continue the war or we provide funds to end the war.
Mr. Speaker and Members, I'm bothered by this request. I'm bothered by it because the President is playing politics with the issue. The President of the United States is saying, "I want this $46 billion and I want it now, and I want to use it for very necessary armor and equipment," because he knows that the Members of Congress do not like to be seen in a bad light, having folks believe that somehow they're not providing support for the soldiers. And he keeps testing the will of this Congress with these kinds of antics.
We know that the American public wants us out of Iraq. We also know the American public wants to indicate its support for the soldiers who are not there because they've decided that we would go to war, but rather, they answered the President's call because they are patriotic, many of them needed jobs, they needed resources, they needed money, so they're there.
Everybody supports the soldiers, but the President is trying to set us up. He is trying to set us up so that if we don't immediately vote on this $46 billion it will look as if we are not giving the soldiers the necessary equipment in order to wage the war. This is absolutely ridiculous.
And I don't know how long this President thinks he can get along with mismanaging this war in the way that he's doing. We have 101 questions we ought to be forcing on him. First of all, where are the 190,000 weapons that have been lost? Where is the money we were supposed to have been getting from the oil wells in Iraq? Where are the billions of dollars that they sent over in cash in the beginning of this war? What happened to all of that money?
We can go on and on and on with questions about Blackwater and the contractors and the mercenaries. We can go on and on about this government that they put together that does not function and will not function. We can ask them, whose side are you on, the Sunnis, the Shias? And now you're trying to manage what Turkey does with the Kurds. The Kurds killed Turkish soldiers. The Turks threatened to go over and invade the Kurdish territory, and now we're over there trying to manage that. It is complicated. We have no business there.
This occupation is draining us, not only the lives of young men and women who are there trying to answer the President's call, but the dollars that should be going into comprehensive universal health care, truly supporting Leave No Child Behind, truly supporting moderate and low-income housing, truly being used to rebuild the infrastructure that's falling apart all over America.
Come on, Mr. President, don't challenge us this way. There are some of us who know what we're going to do, and others are going to get wise very soon.
###
Contact: Mikael Moore
202-225-2201
