Mr. Speaker, the purpose of my coming to the floor this evening, along with a number of my friends and colleagues on this side of the aisle, is to mark the fact that tomorrow will be the 4th year that our military forces instigated by the administration have attacked Iraq and engaged in what the administration has called a war in that country. Most people now have come to realize that we are not engaged in a war in Iraq, but we are engaged now in an occupation, the consequences of which are proving to be increasingly disastrous.
At 10:15 p.m. on March 19, 2003, in a televised address to the Nation, President Bush announced the start of what he refers to as ``the war in Iraq.''
The way in which the administration attempted to justify that attack has been a grave consequence for the United States, both internally and around the world. The President, of course, and others in his administration contended that there was a connection between Iraq and the attack that took place in New York and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, that Iraq was somehow involved in that attack, when all of the evidence and information indicated that that was not the case.
In spite of that, the administration continued to make that allegation. They then went on to say that it was important that the United States invade Iraq for the safety of our country and for the safety of others because Iraq was a country that possessed what they referred to as ``weapons of mass destruction,'' alleging that there was substantial amounts of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
They then went on to assert that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and the President of the United States in a 2003 State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the Nation here in this House asserted that the British Government had learned that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger. When he included that sentence in his State of the Union Address, he was very much aware that the intelligence agencies in our country had said that there was no proof that that was the case. In fact, they had examined the documents upon which those assertions were being made, and they found those documents which had been stolen from the Nigerian Embassy in Rome were, in fact, forged.
So what we have here is an unnecessary and unjustified and consequently illegal attack on another country and a subsequent disastrous occupation which has gone on now for 4 years, and we will be beginning the fifth year starting tomorrow.
As a result of this occupation, over 3,200 American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq since our invasion over 4 years ago. Over 24,000 troops have been wounded in action in Iraq, and the number of Iraqis killed is unknown, but the estimates range as high as 200,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, who have been killed in that country as a result of the military action.
We are spending now about $275 million per day in Iraq. More than $8 billion every month is being spent in that country. And as the Speaker of the House noted earlier this evening in her speech on the floor, at least $10 billion of that money is completely unaccounted for, and much of the rest has been spent in ways that have not been productive, but have been extraordinarily wasteful.
The President in January called for what he referred to as a surge of nearly 30,000 additional soldiers into Iraq. So far that has amounted to 21,500 additional troops that have gone to Iraq in January, and 4,400 more just two weekends ago.
The circumstances there continue to deteriorate as a result of the corrupt and incompetent way in which this illegal invasion and subsequent occupation have been carried out by this administration.
Roughly half of all of the ground equipment that the U.S. Army owns is now located in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the invasion, the Army has lost nearly 2,000 wheeled vehicles and more than 1,000 armed vehicles. To make matters worse, according to the GAO, the Army has not been keeping accurate track of what they have and what they need to reset the force, and they cannot provide sufficient detail for Congress to provide effective oversight.
Between 75,000 and 100,000 pieces of National Guard equipment worth nearly $2 billion are now located in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is equipment that is needed by the National Guard here in our country to carry out the obligations and responsibilities of the National Guard around the United States. And they are now increasingly being deprived of their ability to carry out their responsibilities and obligations because of the loss of their equipment.
The Regular Army has lost so much equipment which has not been replaced that they are now using the equipment of the National Guard to replace the equipment that they have lost and which this administration has failed to provide replacements for.
We have a situation that is confronting us now in Iraq which is increasingly damaging, dangerous, and on the verge of being disastrous for our country as well as for others in the Middle East.
We need this Congress to assert its obligations and responsibilities to oversee the activities of this administration, and that is clearly necessary because all through the 4 years during which this illegal invasion took place followed by this occupation, there has not been any significant oversight by this Congress, which, of course, was controlled by the Republican majority for all of that period of time.
Now that we have a Democratic majority in Congress, that oversight is beginning. Appropriate hearings are being conducted both in this House and in the Senate, and more and more information concerning the way in which this operation has been carried out is being made available to the American people, and as a result of that, more and more people across the country are realizing what a disaster this has been. More and more Americans are understanding how they were intentionally and purposefully misled and deceived by this administration in order to carry out this invasion which had absolutely nothing to do with the attack of September 11, and which cannot be justified in any way whatsoever.
This action is unlawful, and appropriate oversight and supervision based upon detailed and focused hearings by this Congress is now absolutely necessary.
We have with us this evening several of my colleagues who are interested in speaking about this issue, and I would now like to recognize my very good friend from Ohio, who will address the House at this time.
