September 21, 2007
Statement

Floor Statement on the Levin-Reed Amendment

MR. REED: Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Levin, for yielding time and also for being the principal author of the Levin-Reed amendment, the amendment we are considering today. There will be a vote shortly. The amendment recognizes that we have responsibilities in Iraq, but it also recognizes the constraints we face in Iraq.

The first principal constraint is a lack of sufficient forces to maintain the current force level there. That alone must drive a change in mission for our military forces in Iraq. But it also recognizes the fundamental dynamic in Iraq, which is a political dynamic. It is a political dynamic that must be achieved, not by the United States but by Iraqi political leaders. When the President announced the surge in January, he made it very clear that the whole purpose was to provide these leaders with the political space and the climate to make tough decisions. Frankly, those decisions have not been made.

What we have gained on the ground has been tactical momentum. Any time you insert the greatest Army and Marine Corps and Air Force and Navy in the world into a situation, you are going to make progress--and we have. But the real question there is, Will that progress last when we inevitably begin to draw our forces down, as General Petraeus has announced? I think most people would suggest probably not.

So we are left with the reality on the ground and the reality here at home--waning support for a policy that the American people believe is misguided and has been incompetently executed by the administration. We have to change the mission, and the core of the Levin-Reed amendment is to change that mission, to go away from an open-ended ``we will do anything you want, Mr. Maliki, even if you don't do anything we want'' to focused counter-terrorism, training Iraqi security forces, and protecting our forces. It also recognizes that we have to have a timeframe in which to do those things.

I am encouraged and I think all should be encouraged that a year ago when we started talking about initiating withdrawal of forces from Iraq, that was an item which was not only hotly debated on the floor but severely criticized.

General Petraeus has told us he will propose and will probably implement a withdrawal of forces before the end of this year. That is part 1 of the Levin-Reed approach. The second is to begin a transition to these missions, and we hope that can be accomplished in a very short period of time. Finally, we would like to see these missions fully vetted, fully set out and implemented on the ground, moving away from the open-ended approach within a fixed period of time. This approach, together with a very aggressive diplomatic approach, we believe is the key to contributing not just to the stability of Iraq but to the long-term interests of the United States in the region and the world.

I hope we are able to agree to this amendment, to pick up support. We have listened to General Petraeus. Frankly, he has in part agreed with us, in terms of beginning withdrawal. He has suggested, but not definitively, that some transition sometime down the road must take place. But I think--surprisingly to me, at least--when asked what should we do in the next year, he essentially said: I can't tell you until next March, and then I will tell you. We have to have a plan, a strategy for this country that certainly goes beyond next March. The world and our strategic interests will not start and stop in March. They are continuous, they are challenging, and we have to face the best course of action going forward. We believe--I believe strongly--this is the best course of action.

This war in Iraq has cost billions of dollars. More profoundly and more fundamentally, it has taken the lives of over 3,700 American service men and women. It has injured countless. I think the American public is genuinely not only concerned but in a literal sense heartbroken about what is going on. They are asking us--indeed, demanding of us--if the President is unwilling to act, that we act to change the course, to provide a strategy and a policy that is consistent with our interests, with our resources, and with our ideals that will help us move forward.

I hope in the next several minutes as this vote comes to the floor that the message of the American people will be heard and heeded and that we will adopt the Levin-Reed amendment.

I yield my time.

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