-Calls on Congress to stand up to the President”-

Washington, DC - The first Member of Congress to call upon President Bush to develop a plan to bring the troops home from Iraq, and a co-founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus, Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) today lashed out at the Iraq supplemental bill:

“This capitulation proves once and for all that we cannot negotiate with this President.  Military generals on the ground, outside experts like the Iraq Study Group, Congress, and most importantly the American public have voiced their opinions that it is time for the troops to come home but the Administration still refuses to cooperate.

“Faced with blind arrogance we have no other choice but to take bold steps to confront this President and to hold him accountable for his continued failures in Iraq.  If we refuse, if we continue to take piecemeal steps such as today’s vote, then we must accept our complicity in his continued occupation of Iraq.

“In January, the American public put into power a new Democratic Majority in Congress for one simple reason - they trusted us to act boldly to hold this President accountable and to bring our troops home.  So far we are failing the very trust that they have placed in us.  But more importantly, every day that we allow this occupation to continue we are failing our brave young men and women who are serving honorably and professionally in Iraq.  And we are failing their families here at home, who, while struggling to keep their lives and families together, are forced to worry whether their loved ones will come home alive, and if so in what condition.

“Today is not an opportunity to claim victory, or to give bellicose speeches for partisan gain.  Today is an opportunity to grieve for the soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for this President’s failed Iraq policy, to stand by our nation’s sons and daughters who suffer through the irreparable physical and mental wounds of war, and to grieve for the lives that we will continue to lose so long as this President refuses to bring our troops home.”