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Administration Continues to Act Like
a Cowboy in a Western Movie
House of Representatives - November 16, 2005

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to Iraq, the President and his administration continue to act like cowboys in a western movie. When will they learn? And until they do, there will be no solution in Iraq.

Watch this floor speech [Click here to get Windows Media Player]

The President stampeded the American people into a flawed, futile, and fatal war; and this administration keeps applying B-movie mentality to real-life suffering. We have taken sides in a war-torn nation, inadvertent ly backing the Kurds and Shiites to the detriment of the Sunnis.

This is not some clan fight on a movie set that will get solved with a new sheriff riding into town proclaiming peace and progress. But that is what the administration's current strategy seems to be. Despite demands by Iraqi Sunni leaders that American forces stop new military operations, the fighting continues unabated. And like Vietnam, the latest administration tactic is to announce body counts, as if that will promote confidence among the American people. That same tactic was used during Vietnam. It did not work then, and it will not work in Iraq. If anything, this latest tactic will only deepen American resentment to this war because the American people know they are only being told part of the story.

The Rumsfeld command is happy to announce the number of insurgents killed or captured, but they do not talk much about the innocent Iraqi civilians killed or wounded. They are not announcing those numbers every day. Why not? If they ki lled or captured 80 insurgents, how many civilians were injured or wounded in the process? Why do they not tell us the whole story?

Iraq is an urban guerilla warfare, and our brave soldiers should not be fighting a house-to-house war that puts them in maximum danger all the time. There is no front line in Iraq because every road is the front, every house is the front, and every footstep is along the front line. There is no safe haven for our soldiers. Danger is everywhere no matter where they sleep, no matter what they eat, no matter how much they try to forget this war for even a moment.

And the administration calls this progress. The American people see it as a paralysis of leadership. The President stampeded the Congress into a do-or-die scenario, and now our soldiers keep dying in the wrong place at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

When was the last time the President even mentioned Osama bin Laden, the terrorist who is supposed to have started this whole thing, this war on terror?

Reality may be missing in action at the White House, but reality is front and center with the American people. Another Presidential speech with yet another spin on why the President wants this war will not do anything to stabilize Iraq, promote peace, or create democracy.

We are just learning about the latest catastrophe. Now Americans soldiers have to launch operations to uncover hundreds of Sunnis abused, tortured, and malnourished in a prison run by the people we put in power.

Imposing our will is a prescription for civil war and ethnic scandals in Iraq. Imposing a Western blueprint on a Middle Eastern culture will undermine any attempt at real peace. Iraq needs the benefit of a Middle Eastern solution, a cultural process that has worked for thousands of years. Many in the Middle East know this. Many have tried to tell us. But we will not listen. Their will, not ours, will define democracy in Iraq. If we are serious about an election in Iraq, we have t o stop the provocations.

America is at a crossroads: stability or continued occupation of Iraq. The Rumsfeld command now admits American soldiers could be there for a decade or more. That is occupation, and nobody outside the administration favors it. Ten more years of house-to- house guerilla fighting is a failed mission and a guarantee of more U.S. lives lost. 2,056 flags draped over 2,056 coffins; 2,056 honor guards and 2,056 grieving families paying respects of a grateful Nation. And we are s till counting.

Mr. President, you have to change the course.

There's a difference in a President leading the nation through a time of crisis and this President misleading the nation into precipitating a crisis. We have a crisis. We need a leader. We need a plan to return U.S. soldiers to U.S. soil, not a decade from now, but right now.

Announce a pull-out date and pull back the troops to their camps.