Multimedia/Video
Iraq Accountability Act
03/23/2007
Video highlights of Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the House Floor today about the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health, and Iraq Accountability Act, which passed by a vote of 218 to 212.
Full transcript:
Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary leadership of Mr. David Obey, who understands that the strength of our country is indeed measured in our military might but also in the health and well-being of the American people.
Thank you for bringing this important legislation to the floor.
Mr. Speaker, today is indeed an historic day. Today, this new Congress will take the first step - it will vote to end the war in Iraq.
Any statement on the war in Iraq must begin with a tribute to our troops. Today and every day we thank our troops for their courage, for their patriotism, for the sacrifice that they and their families are willing to make.
For 4 years and under the most demanding and dangerous conditions imaginable, they have worked together to do everything that was asked of them. As Members of Congress, our first responsibility under the Constitution, the preamble to the Constitution to which we take an oath of office, is to provide for the common defense. We here in this body have an obligation to work together to do that for the American people.
Mr. Johnson, our colleague, you, Patrick Murphy, and everyone in between who has served our country have helped make it the home of the brave and the land of the free. I salute you both.
I would like to also acknowledge two people who have been the champions of our troops and experts on our national security in this body. The two of them are the leading proponents on the legislation that is on the floor today: the Chair of the Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton; and the Chair of the Defense Appropriations Committee, Jack Murtha. The two of them care deeply about the well-being of our troops, the readiness of our troops and its importance to our national security, and they are proposing that we pass this legislation today.
I have said from the beginning of this war, this war is a grotesque mistake. Last year's bipartisan Iraq Study Group said the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. They called for action.
The facts on the ground are these: after 4 years, Iraq is in chaos and the government is not being held accountable. The administration is sending troops into the battle who are not mission-ready.
And when they come home, our veterans are not being honored as the heroes they are. The revelation of appalling conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and VA facilities across the Nation remind us, once again, that our troops are being sent into a war without the right preparation to welcome them home when they return. What kind of message does that send to our troops?
In terms of the chaos in Iraq, our Commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, recently said, "There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq." General Petraeus. Yet, the President's response to escalating levels of violence is to deploy more troops, a strategy that has been tried and failed, tried and without success three times already.
In the short time since the escalation began, disturbing facts have come to light.
The admission by General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he is, "not comfortable" with the readiness of Army units in the United States.
The declaration whereby the Department of Defense has finally admitted that elements of a civil war do exist in Iraq; in fact, it is even worse than that.
Yesterday, in terms of reconstruction, the conclusion of the Special Inspector General that the failure of the reconstruction effort in Iraq was caused by a lack of planning, coordination and oversight. In fact, more than $10 billion has disappeared, with no accountability. Waste, fraud and abuse are rampant in the reconstruction in Iraq.
How are we going to win the hearts and minds if the money is disappearing in thin air? We must address those and other facts about the war in Iraq.
The bill we debate today, the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health and Iraq Accountability Act, does that by rebuilding our military, honoring our promises to our veterans, holding the Iraqi Government accountable, and enabling us to bring our troops home.
Rather than sending more troops into the chaos that is the Iraqi civil war, we must be focused on bringing the war to an end. We can do that by passing this bill that transforms the performance benchmarks that have already been endorsed by President Bush and the Iraqi Government into requirements.
When those benchmarks are met, or when it becomes clear, after a reasonable amount of time, that they will not be met, the bill requires that our troops leave Iraq on a schedule that our former colleague, Lee Hamilton, a cochair of the Iraq Study Group, called responsible, not precipitate.
Benchmarks without deadlines are just words. And after 4 years of this war, words are not enough.
As Former National Security Advisor Brzezinski wrote in a letter endorsing this bill, "It is clear that a different approach is needed if the Iraqis are to be encouraged to make the political accommodations necessary to promote stability and national reconciliation." That should have been happening a long, long time ago.
Bring the troops home too soon? It is too late for that, 4 years into a war, a war in which we have been engaged longer than we were in World War II.
This bill, in its wisdom, calls upon the Defense Department to adhere to its own readiness standards. The benchmarks were endorsed by the President and the Iraqi Government. The guidelines for the readiness standards are the Defense Department's own. Those standards are intended to assure that before our troops are sent into harm's way, they have the training and the equipment they need to enable them to perform their missions successfully. That simply is not happening.
The war in Iraq has produced a national security crisis, well described by Mr. Murtha and Mr. Skelton and others in the course of the day. Our readiness is at its lowest level since the Vietnam war. By addressing that crisis, the bill supports the troops, supports the troops, and protects the American people.
How do we support the troops by sending them into harm's way without the proper training and equipment, without the proper dwell time at home, and taking them there and overextending their stays and redeploying them over and over again? This bill says, adhere to your own guidelines.
Over and over again, Senator Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, and I have appealed to the President to have a new direction in Iraq, change the mission from combat to training, enabling us to redeploy our troops for limited purpose in Iraq. Engage in diplomacy, encourage the Iraqis to engage in the regional diplomacy so necessary to bring stability to the region. Have real reconstruction. Real reconstruction, reform it; reconstruction, not corruption. And have the political change that is necessary, amend the Constitution to relieve the civil unrest and strife that has produced so much violence.
When we do that, we can bring our troops home. We can redeploy them out of Iraq, and we can turn our attention to the real war on terror in Afghanistan.
A matter of weeks ago I was in Afghanistan with some of our colleagues, and the commander of the coalition forces there told us, flat out, that if we had not taken our attention away from Afghanistan, if we had stayed focused there, the al Qaeda and the Taliban would not have the opportunity that they have there now to make a comeback. That is where the war on terror is. The war in Iraq is a separate war from the war on terror. It is a separate war.
Again, the American people have lost faith in the President's conduct of this war. The American people see the reality of this war. The President does not.
Today, the Congress has an historic opportunity to vote to end the war in Iraq. Each Member of Congress will make a choice. The world is watching for our decision. The choice is clear. Will we renew the President's blank check for an open-ended war without end, or will we take a giant step to end the war and responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq?
The American people want a new direction in Iraq. Today the Congress will provide it. The American people do not support a war without end, and neither should this Congress. I urge an "aye" vote.