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Washington, D.C. --- U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) gave the following statement on the House floor last night during debate on a House Resolution expressing opposition to President Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. A vote on the resolution is expected Friday morning.
"Mr. Speaker, the debate taking place here in the House this week is long overdue. We are approaching our fifth year of this war and this is the first time Congress is debating the strategy President Bush wants to implement in Iraq. Congress can no longer stand on the sidelines and the president has to know that to escalate the war in Iraq is not acceptable.
"We have lost too many American lives, seen too many soldiers seriously injured, and spent too much of hard-earned taxpayers money for no good reason. I am proud of my vote against the initial Iraq War resolution, and see this resolution before us tonight as the beginning of the end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
"Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to commend our troops for the valiant work they've done over the last five years. I am thinking of them when I voice my strong opposition to the president's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.
"The president hopes this troop escalation plan will help secure Baghdad and reduce the sectarian violence that is ripping the country apart. But there is no evidence to support those hopes.
"In fact, on four different occasions, the president increased troop levels in Iraq, and every time these plans failed to calm the violence in Iraq. Last summer, the president moved more troops into Baghdad and said that he hoped to see some results in a matter of months. By October, General William Caldwell had publicly stated that the surge was a failure and the operation had "not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.
"Additional troops are not going to make a difference because there simply is not a military solution to the war in Iraq. The devastating sectarian violence is going to continue, but our troops should no longer be asked to serve as referees in a battle between religious sects that have been fighting for centuries.
"Mr. Speaker, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim that if you speak out against the president's proposal, you are not supporting our troops. This is nonsense. And if they listened to the troops they would know that not even a majority of our troops support the president's plan. According to a poll conducted by Army Times, a weekly newspaper popular with active duty and retired Army personnel, only 41-percent of our troops support the president's plan. But they will do whatever is asked of them, regardless of whether or not they agree with the command.
"Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the war our troops fought without the body armor they needed to protect themselves against improvised electronic devices. It now appears that the military doesn't have the protective equipment needed to properly outfit the troops the president plans to send to Iraq.
"According to the Army, it lacks not only armor kits for soldiers but also trucks and vehicles needed to accommodate any escalation in troop levels. Lieutenant General Stephen Speakes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for force development, said any additional units of troops sent to Iraq would have to share the trucks assigned to the units now there. Do supporters of this plan really believe this Congress should allow the president to move ahead without properly investigating whether or not our troops will have all the necessary protective equipment they need?
"Mr. Speaker, we also need to realistically look at the distraction that the Iraq war is causing in the overall war against terror. While the administration and the Pentagon focus their attention on Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has been forgotten. The Taliban has significantly grown in strength in Afghanistan, and America needs to focus its attention there, the source of the attack on 9/11.
"Mr. Speaker, I opposed this war from the very beginning and want to see our troops come home. The president should be putting forth a plan for withdrawal from Iraq, not escalation. I am willing to vote to cut off funding for the escalation. I have voted against the Iraq supplemental appropriation bills to send a message that we need to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. With this resolution we begin the process of getting out of a place where we should never have been from the beginning." |
