Tuesday, January 29, 2008

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Iraq Trip
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, I rise in morning business to discuss a recent trip I made about 2 weeks ago to Iraq. It was a trip I made, as I have every year since I have been in the Senate, to visit Iraq, to visit firsthand with Georgia troops on duty, Georgia troops who are there standing guard for America, as well as to interact with the Iraqi Government--the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shias--and rank-and-file Iraqi people to measure the progress of our effort in Iraq but, more importantly, the progress of the Iraqis themselves.

I am delighted to be able to come and give a very unbiased and, hopefully, unvarnished and very plain recitation of the remarkable changes that have taken place in that country. We all know a year ago in this body we had serious debate over the fate of our effort in Iraq. There were calls for us to withdraw. There were declarations that we had lost. There were other challenges that were brought forward. But finally, though difficult, the decision by the President to commit to an increase of troops for the surge and follow the anti-insurgency plan of General Petraeus and put General Petraeus in charge finally became a reality.

About midyear on the ground in Iraq the deployment was complete and they began exercising the plan.

Let me try and give an idea of what Iraq today is like compared to Iraq 1 year ago. When I landed at the Baghdad Airport, for the first time I drove by car--by armored vehicle--into downtown Baghdad. Every year before we had to fly in on Apache helicopters because of the ground fire and the danger. We arrived in Baghdad in the Green Zone and spent the night. On every trip before to Iraq, they took us out to Kuwait City to a Sheraton Hotel when darkness fell in Baghdad because it was so dark. Twice during the course of the visit we got outside of the Green Zone and into a Chevy Suburban in one case, and into an MRAP in another case, and went out on two excursions. I would like to talk about them for a second.

The first was in an MRAP. I have to pause here and pay great tribute to Senator Biden. About 18 months ago, Senator Biden led the charge in this body for us to fund the MRAPs to try and do away with the tragic loss of life that was taking place through IEDs on the ground and on the roads in Iraq and in Baghdad.

There is no question in this body that the most strident voice in favor of that funding and that commitment was the Senator from Delaware. Today, the soldiers of the United States of America and of Iraq and of our coalition partners ride in the new MRAP vehicles, which are remarkable. General Petraeus told me at the dinner I had with him that in the first five hits where an IED exploded under an MRAP, there was not a single scratch of an American serviceman. I know a week ago we lost our first serviceman in an MRAP, but that serviceman was the gunner above the turret at the time he was hit. It has a 100-percent record in terms of those inside of the MRAP when moving the troops. It is a marvelous transformation and a great testament to this body, Republican and Democrat alike, to rise to the occasion to see to it that when our men and women are threatened, if there is a technique, if there is a technology, if there is engineering sufficient to bring about a new product, we will do it, and we will fund it. We did it on the MRAP, and today our soldiers are safer and our efforts stronger.

I rode in one of those MRAPs to a neighborhood known as Gazaria. Gazaria was the neighborhood that was completely destroyed 2 1/2 years ago. I went to a market that had about 20 shops, of which about half were open, and traveled with a squad headed by a lieutenant colonel who was making microgrants and microloans and measuring the progress of previous loans that had been made to Iraqis who were reopening their stores. Senator Cornyn, Senator Coburn, and myself stood in a bakery and ate an Iraqi-type of flatbread and drank tea in a market that had been totally destroyed and unoccupied for 2 1/2 years. We went to an auto repair shop where two brothers had reopened the shop and were beginning to do repairs and had bought a generator to provide them with reliable, continuous electricity. These are microloans made by the United States of America to the Iraqi people to reinvest in themselves, reinvigorate their enterprises, reinvigorate their employment.

Was it dangerous? Sure. We had on bulletproof vests, we had on helmets, and we traveled in MRAPs. But heretofore you could never have gone into downtown Baghdad as we did on this trip. Twice we ran into local Iraqis: once two Sunnis who joined the awakening movement and the CLCs who were taking up arms to guard the secured market to see to it that no terrorist or insurgent could come in and do damage, and then twice to refugee families who over 2 years ago had left Baghdad and Gazaria with no intention of ever returning, but now, because of its relative security, they returned.

The second trip was made by Chevy Suburban--not by armored tank or not by MRAP--and we left the Green Zone and went through Baghdad to the government building where we met with Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders. For the first time in my annual trips back there, the talk was substantive and the inference on the part of the leadership was that things were getting ready to get better. As all of us know, on debaathification and reconciliation, things have started to happen.

As the President acknowledged in his speech last night, they will be happening in terms of sharing the oil revenues and eventually a hydrocarbon law for the entire country.

My point in bringing this story to the Senate and telling it firsthand is the progress the President described last night is real. It is tangible. Things are changing in Iraq, and they are changing for the better for the Iraqis and for us. We have brought back two groups, and as the President said, we will bring back five more without replacing them this year. Our troop level will be going down. We are going from a combat confrontation to an oversight role in terms of helping and providing logistics to the Iraqis.

Have the Iraqis responded? Think about this: Remember about 6 months ago when the Prime Minister of Great Britain said they were pulling the British troops out of Basra, and the American press wrote about another failure: One of our partners was leaving, so what were we going to do. Nobody has written about Basra since then because here is what happened: All the Brits who left were replaced by Iraqis--not by Americans, not by coalition forces. Have you read about damage or problems in Basra? No, you haven't because the army has performed magnificently--the Iraqi Army.

Today we read of reports in Mosul, and we mourn the tragedy of the loss of U.S. soldiers, but in that big attack going on against one of the last strongholds left of the insurgents of al-Qaida, the spear of that attack, the point of that attack was all Iraqi soldiers. I had the privilege to meet with Iraqi generals who, for the first time, see themselves energized, see themselves fully capable of assuming the role that we have taken for so long: for us to move to oversight and for them to move to the point of the spear.

The practical matter is, whatever mistakes may have been made in the past, whatever differences we may have had, the young men and women of the United States of America have performed magnificently. General Petraeus has lived up to every single promise of hope we had for him.

In the name and in the memory of the tragic loss of life in Iraq, Georgia soldiers such as Diego Rincon, LT Noah Harris, SGT Mike Stokely, and the other 119, the sacrifice they have made has not been in vain, and we are on the doorstep, hopefully, of building and of helping to have created a democracy that will last and endure in the Middle East. Hopefully, it will be the first step of many to accomplish the hope of peace, freedom, and liberty that we in this country so often take for granted but the rest of the world cherishes.

So the President was right last night in his State of the Union speech. We have made great progress. There is work left to be done, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it is not a locomotive. It is the light of hope, liberty, and peace and freedom because of the sacrifice and the endurance of the fine young men and women in the U.S. military serving in harm's way today in Iraq.