almost half a billion dollars more than four hundred million dollars will be spent today in iraq and here's what we get from it as seen by you picked up any newspaper this the washington post which i on my doorstep this morning dropped out tell us about all the violence tell a far bombing followed a bloody weekend of attacks against shiite militia pilgrims the deadliest instance taking place sunday when a suicide bomber killed at least sixty three learned yesterday they all a province it was on to explain how twenty one people were kidnapped yesterday bob page it has the names of three of our soldiers who were killed and then of course mr president we have general casey general casey the army chief of staff said and i  yesterday and because one of the for the armed services committee the cumulative effect of the last six years plus at war have left our army out of balance consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do to their opinion but it's been a good debate we have courses spent time on iraq on the side of the aisle but also how the war has done so much to damage our security and our economy call the three trillion dollar mistake the boxes on the war now actual numbers that i understand in about a year they'll be up to a trillion dollars stiglitz economists are smarter than i am says three trillion dollars that's what we talked about this war that will soon be going into the secure has been devastating to our country the present budget we had a meeting this took place in the budget present budget mr president cut virtually everything one of the victims in his budget is public broadcasting presence of the cuts that the president's made him a kroger move that seven years has been present and we don't have money to do the basic things this country needs to because we borrowed a trillion dollars to take your the war so we've had a good debate each side is spent a little but of course the suicide bombers continue to wreak havoc and we all deplore that i was just in israel last week at the border town and gaza city does a name and terrorism from hamas continues to be devils with people of that with rockets coming over every day but they can't leave and leave the terrorists to prevail there and i think the same thing is the situation in iraq the majority leader talks about the cost and they are significant but the cost if we had to come back in and clean up after the terrorists take over if we left prematurely could be far greater than what we're expected to have to pay in any event it's very difficult to put a price on freedom and security i think we have had a good debate we have speakers on our side actually for about another about five four and a half hours or so but as i told the majority leader  we could yield back some time on our side to work with majority leader to develop a schedule that would be convenient for all of the members at this time because of the precise nature of the unanimous consent request i would have jacked on behalf of the minority but would suggest that it should be possible this afternoon early this afternoon for the majority of minority leaders to sit down and work out a schedule that would meet the needs of all of our members and be convenient for the entire body center from the bottom mr president iraq as today to speak about iraq mr president the fall following the bombing of the golden mosque in samarra our enemies tried to plunge iraq into chaos and in certain parts of iraq they were succeeding terrorists and extremists were put were pitting iraqi against iraqi sunni against shia shia against sunni in baghdad iraqi families were being forced to leave their homes and to resettle in areas where other members of the religious community died iraqi police and army units were nowhere near capable of taking the lead during operations and on the political front progress was very slow and when the going got tough many called the for u s withdrawal an abandonment of iraq thankfully the president did not listen to the calls for a defeat and retreat the president reviewed our strategy and changed course this was the needed change i visited interact twice before this change of strategy and i can tell you it was a dangerous place during one of my trips we had to take a helicopter from the green zone to baghdad international airport because of an i e d threat and in january of two thousand and seven the president and general petraeus launched the surge of american forces into iraq the iraqi people quickly realized that something dramatic could happen to those who  worried that america was preparing to abandon them instead saw tens of thousands of american forces flowing into their country they saw our forces moving into the neighborhoods clearing out terrorists and staying behind to ensure that the enemy did not return and they saw our troops along with prevention reconstruction teams coming in to ensure that improved security was followed by improvements in daily life the surge is now its cheating its primary aims of improving population security in baghdad and reversing the cycle of sectarian violence that plagued iraq and although there is much more work to be done security has improved considerably since general petraeus began implementing this new strategy that became fully operational in mid june and according to the u s military monthly attack levels have decreased sixty percent since that time civvy and deaths are down approximately seventy five percent and although al qaeda in iraq remains a dangerous threat its capabilities are severely severely diminished thousands of extremists in iraq have been captured or killed including hundreds of key al qaida leaders and their operatives iraqi forces have now assumed responsibility for security and nine of eighteen iraqi provinces and are now leading combat operations all over the country iraqi security forces and concerned local citizens groups continue to grow develop capabilities and provide more security for their country the government of iraq is committed to one day assuming fiscal and overall responsibility for c l c s which some now call the sons of iraq and has begun structuring bookcase and training programs for these seals these who want to rejoin the civilian workforce the president's strategy in iraq has put us on a path to success u s and iraqi troops working together hav significant results by alliances down dramatically in political progress is being made the government of baghdad really recently passed the bath of caisson legislation and a pension law and is sharing oil revenues with the different provinces significant bottom up political progress is occurring at the local level in iraq where provincial governments continue to spend national revenue on reconstruction and many people are engaging in local politics and on the economic front the central government of iraq recently reached its two thousand and seven target of thirty point two billion dollars in budget revenue one month before the end of the year the government of iraq recently completed early repayment of its outstanding obligations to the international monetary fund the baghdad chamber of commerce commerce recently hosted a business  which more than eight thousand executives entrepreneurs salesmen investors attended mr president approximately two weeks ago i traveled again to iraq and was briefed by general petraeus and other commanders on the ground and iraqi security officials betray offenders troops are obviously an undoubted flea doing a remarkable job of turning things around in iraq this was a different trip for me there was a more secure feeling in the air i felt optimistic more than any other time since the war started and you really can tell that things are remarkably different i visited a town just south of baghdad where three months ago al qaida had been in total control i felt so safe along with two other senators and our staff that we walked through a local market without a helmet and spoke to dozens of residents including children through a translator and one of the biggest their biggest fears the iraqi people's biggest fears is that america will surrender and leave prematurely they fear for their lives their children and the future of the country if we surrender great almost unbelievable strides have obviously been made and we are headed in the right direction and despite this fact some of my colleagues on the other side continue to introduce defeatists legislation such as what we have before us today that calls for tying the hands in this front line in the war on terror so if things get better and better the democrats continue to call for retreat they continue to politicize the war in iraq persisting in calls for troop withdrawal when the surge is demonstrating real success both militarily and politically scaling back to withdrawing when we are succeeding so brilliantly clearly equals defeat and make absolutely no sense they have concluded that america has lost and refused to listen to the judgment of our military leaders responding to whether gains made in iraq would be lost if we abruptly withdrew our troops speaker of the house nancy pelosi recently stated there have been gains the gains there she said there haven't been gains the gains have not produce the desired effect which is the reconciliation of iraq this is a failure this is a failure mr president such defeatist nonsense is not the way to boost the morale of our troops on the ground or to show gratitude for their success i call on the speaker to visit iraq to talk to our troops to talk to the iraqi people and to thieve how successful the surge is working for their own eyes further peculiar that the democrats keep calling for withdrawal over and over again when initially they criticize the administration in ministration for not having sent more troops in the first place to iraq and when the plan for the surge was announced they roundly attacked it going so far as to say that the war was already lost then when the surge began to show great military success democrats again criticized it and said that the only purpose of the surge was to enable political reconciliation in iraq now both now that both military and political successes are being realized the democrats are once again going to have to redefine what failure looks like when general petraeus first took command he said hard is not hopeless today there is hope and optimism in iraq mr president amazing progress has been made i shouldn't have to say this but we must support our troops not just in word but indeed the democrats need to stop playing games with the brave men and women who are sacrificing so much for this country they need to stop introducing legislation that tie strings to money for our troops and they need to stop introducing legislation that would prematurely bring our troops home and ruin all the gains that they have made over the last five years partisan politics needs to be set aside we need to come together as a congress we need to come together as a country and get behind the effort and the mission in iraq let's finish what we started not just for today but for the nation commitment and dedication to noble pursuits and defined our great nation we must not give way to weariness no united states senate is where great ideas and thoughts are to be put forth and considered ideas and thoughts that are in the majority party have they learned nothing as history not taught us through the pain and suffering of millions of the philosophy of appeasement only provides a slight respite from the forces of evil  unleashed continue to unleash incalculable pain and suffering on the innocent so what happens if we had dropped the troops withdrawal legislation before us today do they really think that al qaida is just going to leave and just play a wonderful humane role in our world and make no mistake the majority of the forces that oppose us in iraq are affiliated with al qaida that the supporters of this bill think that al qaida will conclude well we have won in iraq now let's leave the americans  to live in pace thank god he really believes that that is the question the american people have to ask themselves what will happen if we pick an arbitrary time to leave iraq based on the policy of appeasement rather than accomplishments of our new counterinsurgency strategy mr president i've been to iraq twice the first time it was an armed camp everything that i saw it was a little bit discouraging for me the second time was after  i have to say it was a complete change and it was a change because of the intelligent leadership of our military over there now again the question american people have to ask themselves what will happen if we pick an arbitrary time to leave iraq based on a policy of appeasement rather than accomplishments of our new kind of insurgency strategy simply put mr president what happens the day after answers to these questions well from what i can discern from the members of taking to the floor to defend it the answer is simple nothing they simply do not have a plan for the day after one of the nearly four thousand service members who volunteered to serve their country and who have now paid the ultimate sacrifice as their memorial and history raid thank you for service but some members of congress grew wary and your sacrifice in the sacrifices your of your family were in dying i know what those sacrifices are like our family lost my only living brother in world war two on the plus the oh right the one that knocked out hitler's oil reserves in romania and in the spirit given a lot of credit for bringing the war to an end in an expeditious fashion it was hard on our family we're proud of my brother we're proud that he was willing to sacrifice his life for us like these my gosh the man has led a revolution over there in a very real sense he has the been right in his approach towards these problems over there he wrote the book on insurgencies and his we leave the chaos that could result might make the whole self slaughter that occurred after the fall of indochina look minuscule by comparison i wonder what fanciful legislative fix our colleagues will offer then so what is the alternative do opponents of this bill offer only empty rhetoric now mr president we support a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy devised and implemented by general petraeus it is a strategy that is producing remarkable results results the point to only one conclusion in a little over a year the coalition has regained the initiative for example general petraeus stated in his december thirtieth briefing that overall major general joseph il the commanding officer of the first cavalry division in the office through into who until december and was responsible for our operations in baghdad he stated in an interviewed late last year with the new york times the coalition forces have dramatically reduced if not eliminated outsiders presence in every neighborhood in baghdad the general also pointed out that murders in baghdad are down eighty percent in addition during a recent briefing lieutenant general raymond  rno who just returned from iraq and has been nominated to become the army's new vice chief of staff stated that terrorist operations in baghdad have decreased by fifty nine percent in the past year suicide attacks in baghdad have been reduced sixty six percent from twelve to for a month the number of improvised explosive device attacks in baghdad has also declined by forty five percent baghdad is not the only area where we have seen success during my trip to iraq last year was senator smith i was able to witness the dramatic changes that have occurred in al anbar as i mentioned where al qaida has been thrown out of the vast areas that of that province including its major cities r areas that were once deemed rough refugees for al qaida as vile perversion of a dignified and peaceful religion the success of baghdad and now on bar are also being repeated throughout iraq in the n iron harvest has been launched this operation has already achieved some important successes for example during the month of december the coalition and iraqi security forces have killed or captured over twenty al replacement did not fare much better he was captured on february eighteenth the number of attacks in diyala have also decreased no doubt that the recent killing of the al qaida emir of the allah help this trend in addition in the past two weeks the question what do you think the senior al qaeda leaders would be doing with their time if we left iraq i wonder if they ever will grow weary like somebody in this body has i can tell you i believe they are getting w i think they know that their strategy is irritating the whole arab world especially those who are moderate who really live their religion who really do believe in the koran the holy book and who really know that these people why in the face of true arab principles to islamic principles that how were all the successes possible the answer is our generals over there led by general petraeus his strategy is based upon the classic counterinsurgency tactic of providing security to the local population thereby enabling the government to restore services to their people which in turn creates the popular in in the population a vested interest in the success of government institutions one of the ways this is the complex is through the use of joint security stations under this tactic a portion of a city such as a neighborhood is cordoned off and then searched for insurgents previously once this was accomplished the help secure the surrounding areas but simultaneously enable our forces to train and evaluate iraqi forces much like the local police officer in a major urban area our forces use the joint security station stations i should say to learn about the locale to which they are assigned and can quickly adapt to make the unique security needs of the individual community the success of these joint security stations can be seen in their creations throughout  with over fifty of them in baghdad alone however under this legislation our forces will no longer be able to conduct operations from joint security stations in fact they would be banished to bases isolated from the iraqi people and unable to accompany iraqi forces on missions under this bill the few remaining forces would only be able to conduct limited operations against al qaida the security provided to the iraqi people which is the foundation of our recent success w provide substantial financial resources to purchase whatever the terrorists choose i would also point out that in the past it has been publicly reported that al qaeda has actively sought the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction neville chamberlain would be proud so yes mr president i lot like others in this body and weary but i am weary of appeasement i am weary of such defeatist legislation being debated on the floor of the senate this is  chamber for great ideas and concepts that will ensure the betterment of the american public and lead to the freedom of oppressed people all over the world mr president's legislation falls far short of that i guess standard and mr president just think about it here we have this country iraq with three different factions who are suddenly starting to get together who are working together who are making headway who have an enormous oil wealth that could be used for their people who are tired of the al qaida who have been throwing them out of the various provinces who are cooperating with the united states of america and who are starting to cooperate with each other who sit between two of the most rogue nation nations in the world iran and syria and all of this success happening and we have people who want to pull us out prematurely i don't understand it personally i i respect the sincerity of the sponsors and those who vote for this i just think that if we're going to be weary let's be weary of the way they handle things and mr president i would like to i would ask and consent and my following remarks be placed in an appropriate place in the record today by objection mr president i'd like to change course for a moment to reflect on the passing of william buckley junior i am aware of my limitations and speaking of bill buckley anything that i might add to the eloquent words that have already come from his friends at the national review and from his friend and my friend the senator from connecticut joe lieberman  thought small by comparison still as someone who knew bill as someone who admired bill and as someone who learned a great deal from bill i would be remiss if i did not say a few words about this extraordinary man and his extraordinary life the life of william  jr reads like something from one of his many fiction novels growing up in in mexico his first language was spanish as a prep school student he demonstrated he was a real entrepreneur typing his classmate's paper from one dollar at a crack and consistent with the with the writer america got to know over the years he would charge an extra twenty five cents to correct their grammar after graduating he spent time at the university of mexico studying spanish and he served his country in the army making second lieutenant only after serving in the army did he go on to college something widespread in those days when a hot war was followed by a long cold war and largely unknown today with the exception of those in our o t c and benefiting from the g i bill as a student at yale he distinguished himself in addition to his studies in political science economics and history he cut his teeth as a debater and was elected chairman of the yale daily news following college a year in the cia and publication of his book god and man at yale he began a career as a writer and in one hundred fifty five his public life began as he founded the national review the national review never had a massive circulation it continues to be subsidized by the contributions left had been triumphant herbert crow herbert proly the new republic woodrow wilson and franklin roosevelt there was no real answer to the arguments that they made on behalf of higher taxes a comprehensive state and a highly regulated economy for sure there was a republican party and republicans continued to have electoral success but there was no real consistent conservative point of view on the battlefield of ideas have been abandoned to the progressive left bill buckley foot  retaking some of that ground in establishing a framework of conservative ideas aims of limited government the protection of human liberty economic entrepreneurship and military strength in the face of a totalitarian threat bent on world domination the development of these ideas was not always pretty but through fits and starts a movement grows we first heard its voice in the one nine hundred sixty four presidential election an election in which republicans were tr hundred eighty these conservative ideas would become a majority one that put more help to put ronald reagan in the white house bill was no doubt combative but i think most would say he was always having fun it was a real intellectual but he was no dollar academic he used to make his way around new york city on a motorcycle when he made his last shot run for mayor of new york city and was asked what he would do if he won he responded demand a recount he took up the harpsichord at the occasionally ear to and on occasion irritating him to death but i love the man bill buckley in addition loved to sail there was a man who loved the written word and it was fitting that he passed away to his desk and that is home his son christopher also an accomplished writer noted quote he might have been working on a column unquote and i have no doubt that we would have benefited from it democrats and republicans alike as the authors of the federalist papers abraham lincoln franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan understood american remains an experiment it is an experiment in republican self government that experiment is constantly being tested to build them through extraordinary and challenging times times like our own that tested he was a great american who let a great american allies and america will miss him i have to say that i knew bill buckley i appreciated bill buckley he had enormous influence on me at the time a liberal democrat or at least shortly before that a liberal democrat and help me to see the merit in intelligent conservative approaches he also intellectually no doubt the absence of bill will be even more painful to the family his left behind the consistent with the catholic faith one kept deeply by bill i hope that this is also a prayers in particular it was my privilege to serve with with james buckley in a variety of capacities his brother is a true gentleman a wonderful human being he was a great senator here although only for one term but both bill and james jim buckley are wonderful examples of the family that has contributed so much to america and i can assure you that the congress and all of mr president under mission work more accurate thank you mr president i rise today to speak about what is currently happening here on the floor of the united states senate and why i'm hopeful will happen our leaders senator reid has one more time brought up and rightly so to appoint to debate and try to move forward on changing course in the war in iraq five years of war the largest expenditure now of the federal government including and in terms of monthly expenditures and certainly in terms of loss of life it goes on every day day after day all you have to do is look at the newspaper and see that families continue to pay a huge price for this war i stood on the floor of the senate five years ago and was one of twenty three members who voted no i'm going into this war but i spent every every other vote doing everything i can to support our troops to make sure i did everything that i could to make sure that we honored them through our efforts to equip them and make sure they have the resources and that when they come home and put on the veterans cap that we are in fact providing the health care and the resources that they need and i'm proud to be part of a  place veterans health insurance health care as a top priority to really make that happen mr president i often think back to the discussions before my vote and discussing with my husband who is a fourteen year veteran of the air force in the air national guard and his reminding me that the best way to support american troops the best way to support our troops is to give them the right mission the second thing is to make sure they have the resources they need and the third thing is to make sure that there is a clear exit strategy for that mission i did not support that mission and believe that there was not the evidence that was needed to carry on that mission i have supported those resources howard that they need and now it is important it is critical that we as a body as a congress come together to support the exit strategy the effort to change the mission that needs to occur in iraq to be able to bring our people home to be able to stop the multiple deployments redeployments that are going on and that we refocus on those areas of the world and those groups like al qaeda that truly are a threat to us and that means afghanistan that means other kinds of strategies to be able to truly keep us safe that's what we need to do the most important thing is to keep us safe as a country to be smart about our strategy and that's really what we're debating here whether or not we are going to be smart about our strategy to keep us safe whether or not we are going to pay attention to the daily loss of life in iraq and whether or not we are going to pay attention to the almost fifteen billion dollars a month that is being spent on that war which is now a civil war that is not being invested back home in america and that's what i want to speak about for a moment understanding that the most important thing is the loss of life and what is happening to our troops and their families as i said i'm extremely proud of the fact that we made a very top priority for us in the new majority coming in the full funding  veterans health care we've done that we've tackled the problems that we have seen with walter reed and the inability for our troops as they move between systems to get the effective care they need by passing the wounded warriors legislation we have continued to bring forward other efforts to be able to address the what i consider abuse of our troops by the continual redeployment without enough dwell time rest time for them to be here at home as the army manual would require but we also have another very important piece of this which goes to what is happening when we have almost fifteen billion dollars a month that is being diverted from our autonomy which from michigan sure looks like a recession i can't speak to every other part of the country but from our autonomy and our families and our communities as being spent on a war that the majority of americans that the majority of democrats the majority of americans democrats republicans independents people of all persuasions and all states are saying we no longer want to go in this direction we want to change this mission we want to bring our people home but we are now getting ready to do a budget and the distinguished chairman today is on the budget committee i served with distinction in the house and and now in the senate and mr president you know as well as i do that we are now grappling with very tough decisions about how do we address the needs here in america and i think that i'm top of the issues of national policy and how to keep us safe and of loss of life and how to support our troops that we have to grapple with the fact that last year for and sense when we passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the senate an effort to extend health care health insurance to ten million children of working families the president vetoed it saying it was too much money and yet it was about half of one month's of what we are spending in iraq today investing in children healthy children in our country of working families who just unfortunately are working in jobs where they don't have health insurance and don't have enough of a wage to be able to afford the one thousand dollars a month premium or more that they would have to pay do we focus on supporting those families and change this direction or do we continue down this road of saying no to our children we have the opportunity to create new jobs in the energy economy in michigan we are moving full speed ahead  alternative energy not only and our vehicles but when meals and solar and biofuels and all of these things take partnerships and then vestment we have an energy tax provision a measure that we can one vote short of being able to override it one of the multitude of the filibusters have gone on in this floor historic level of filibusters stopping us at every turn we came one vote short and we're talking about having some resources to be able to put into a tax incentives to be able to produce alternative energies and the infrastructures of the biofuels can actually get to the p and you can not only drive an e eighty five car but get it ready five at the pump it takes some investments to be able to do that and we have been told no and being able to put dollars into that area and yet the amount of money that we're talking about is less than two months spending in iraq infrastructure we have worlds and bridges we have seen last year what happened  minnesota in terms of a huge bridge collapse and what happened in human life and what happened to the community involved we have roads and bridges across our country water and sewer systems that are aging that need a facelift that need to be able to get some additional dollars so that we can bring ourselves into the modern age and much of our infrastructure and yet we are told again no there are no resources to put money into our infrastructure now we are rebuilding roads in iraq we are rebuilding schools in iraq we are in fact one of the original i don't was i'll never forget was to put wireless technology  into schools that was in the budget but it wasn't the american budget it was the iraqi reconstruction budget i have been working for years to get technologies in our schools new technology because every single student is going to face at minimum working with a computer whether you work at a gas station or whether you work at a high tech company and yet we can't do that here in america we have been told by this administration and by those who have been in the majority for six years no but at the same time that was in the budget for iraq we now find ourselves in this situation with a tremendous housing crisis in my state of michigan it has frankly maxed master a larger economic crisis where people have been losing their jobs or losing their incomes seeing all of their costs go up but had that equity in the home that was keeping them going that home equity loan it was keeping them going all the sudden all of the values go down and we are seeing the collapse in the housing market which is rippled out way beyond housing now into our capital markets into our entire economy and yet when we come to the floor and we're going to be asking shortly after this that we vote in this filibuster that is going on on the  change in iraq mission we're going to be asking to come together around a housing proposal that frankly i think is pretty modest it's important it's good it's the right thing to do but it certainly is something within the realm of reasonableness and yet i know it's going to be difficult to be able to get this passed and we're going and the cost of that is again about two weeks in iraq it will to focus on one of the most devastating crises going on in america today most people most america fast families save through equity in their home that's how most people are able to get into the middle class hire out people who work hard play by the rules done all the right things that a job saved up the down payment were able to to get a home and then find themselves in a situation where they're looking around and long wait a minute what's going on here what about me what's happening in our economy i need some help we're trying to do that i hope we're going to be able to come together and do that but if we hear one more time no we can't do that we can't afford it we're talking about less than two weeks of what is being spent in iraq how many towns that we heard all of the comments about leave no child behind about the fact that we are not keeping our promises as it relates to education we passed new high standards we are support the high standards but we promise we promise with that would come resources to help children help schools succeed we have seen dramatic underfunding of that again in this president's budget he eliminates forty eight different forty eight different education programs in this budget including the efforts that focus on vocational education and other things that are important for the future forty eight different programs won't we will be told that if we try to invest in education that is too much is too much we can't afford to keep the promise of leave no child behind we passed on a bipartisan basis something called the america competes act and and i want to congratulate you this was a great bipartisan effort i know that does senator from tennessee senator alexander was a real champion of that that focuses on math and science and technology investments in the future i wish we had seen those investments  fully authorized fully funded in the president's budget health research to save lives science research the national science foundation those things that will make us competitive for the future every other country is racing to invest in science we see china racing and japan and south korea other countries around the world that are racing to get to that next technology whether it's advanced battery technology research whether it's biotechnology whether it's new cures in health care and yet we the greatest country in the world are seeing those sayings  but yet six hundred fifteen billion dollars a month in iraq which is by the way not paid for and goes right on the deficit for our children to pay for in the future these priorities don't make sense they make no sense when we look to the future i would like to ask the president how about just one month for america have a just one month we'll take one much fifteen billion dollars in vested to help us with jobs keep the american jobs here opportunity through education innovation helping our own families with health care or be able to keep their home how much as one month for america this debate we're having on the floor about iraq is incredibly important and so many different levels and that's why i appreciate senator reid bringing us to this point there are other pieces of this that we are committed to addressing a modern g i bill my father went to school on the g i bill after world war two we ought to be doing the same thing for our returning veterans it will cost them dollars are we going to hear once again while we can afford it can afford to invest in our veterans i hope not the reality is there's a great connection between what is happening now in terms of filibustering our effort to move forward to change direction in iraq one more time one more filibuster and what we want to do next which is focus on the incredibly serious housing crisis in america there is a connection because we are saying that not only are we not doing the smartest thing to keep us safe from a strategic standpoint from a national security sam point we are also using dollars precious precious dollars taxpayer dollars in a way that is actually making us less safe at home by undercutting our ability to have a strong economy strong families to support those who are in the middle class who are trying to get work hard to get into the middle class struggling to stay in the middle class the majority of americans find themselves him in great jeopardy right now on a number of fronts and this is the time they that they look to their government to play a role to help create opportunity to be able to make strategic investments here at home that will make sure we can continue to have the american way of life that we are so proud of so this matters this matters i'm looking forward to the time we're going to change that direction in iraq and i hope it comes soon i hope we are able to save men and women who are through the fourth redeployment now job well done thank you for your opportunity that they will come to an economy that works for them and their family that's our goal and we're going to keep focusing on this issue until we item was a letter that had been sent to the chairman of the house intelligence committee by attorney general new casey and admiral mcconnell the director of national intelligence and it was a letter that tried to explain the problems that they are having that we are having in gathering intelligence on terrorists as a result of the lapse of the foreign intelligence surveillance act provisions of the so called protect america act what we're debating right now is a resolution that focuses on when and how we should leave iraq and presumably the next resolution will be debating focuses on developing a strategy to fight al qaeda now most of us appreciate the fact that the best way to deal with terrorists the very first thing that you should do is to have in place a good intelligence gathering capability primarily in understanding the communications that terrorists are having with one another abroad the reason that that is the number one  part of the strategy in dealing with terrorists is that unlike a war in which you're fighting an enemy with uniforms representing another country these terrorists are shadowy characters who live anywhere in the world who travel all around and who get together in cells every now and then and plan some kind of activity which is designed to terrorize whether in london or spain or malaysia or in the united states or wherever and in order to fight the terrorists you first want to understand what they're up to and then prevent it from occurring if you're having to react to a terrorist attack after it's occurred you're in a very bad situation now we create a department of homeland security and we have a lot of different plans and procedures for dealing with an attack after it's occurred but in many respects then it's too late so in this war against these radical islamists these terrorists who would kill anywhere they can and target innocent people the very first thing you want to do is to be able to have good intelligence on them now we collect intelligence in a variety of ways but in modern times one of the best ways to collect intelligence is by intercepting communications and there are a variety of means in which that's done one of the things that the congress did was to develop a law that provides protection to american citizens and others to ensure that this intelligence collection does not impinge on our civil rights we don't want to be have the government eavesdropping on us and that's an appropriate thing for us to ensure the problem is that because technology has outpaced the law back when it was written in the one nine hundred seventy s and technology now enables us to collect these or to to do electronic intercepts against foreign targets through some very sophisticated  new means the law that set up the procedural the process for getting approval to do that takes far too long it's far too complicated and in fact the bottom line is it just plain doesn't work it's it's paperwork in an electronic era kind of comparison and so the president came to the congress and said you've got to get a new way of doing this that enables us to utilize this new  technology that we have to intercept these communications and last august we passed the foreign intelligence surveillance act the feis a law and it has another an acronym protect america act enables us to utilize this new technology and also importantly provide that the telecommunications companies that work with us on this don't have to worry about somebody suing them because they're helping the united states government collect intelligence the problem is that the law that we passed had to two problems number one it expired after six months because some in the congress felt that they wanted to take another look at this and secondly it did not have liability protection for these telecommunications companies for the previous work that they had done for us it was only for the work going forward and the telecommunications companies essentially said to the united states government we're not going to continue to do this work for you unless you can ensure that we're not going to get sued and that the lawsuits that are currently pending go away and essentially and i'm oversimplifying are the lawsuit simply said you should have done what you did because the united states government shouldn't have been engaged in this in this kind of surveillance well that's not the fault of the telecommunications companies they were simply doing what the government asked them to do they were a volunteer to provide their services they're very essential services to help us collect this intelligence and as with any other volunteer you shouldn't get sued just because you stop to help somebody along the side of the road to get hurt in an accident and the same thing is here the government asked them to volunteer their services to help collect this intelligence and they shouldn't be sued but lawyers being what they are filed some lawsuits and those lawsuits need to be made to go away so the president said when you revise the law and pass it in february of two thousand and eight make sure that you have liability protection not only going forward but also for the suits that had already been filed and sure enough the intelligence committee here in and add the retroactive liability protection precisely what's needed however when the bill was sent over to the house of representatives the house democratic leadership said no we're not going to take this up and promptly went on the recess that we just got back from a twelve day period in which congress was not in session and during that period of time the law had lapsed and general new casey and ad connell in this letter made it clear that during that period of time we lost intelligence that could be very meaningful to us we don't know whether it is or not because we lost it we couldn't collect it but the kind of intelligence that we have been collecting out of this program has been very very helpful for us to know what these terrorists are up to so that we can prevent attacks we are now in a situation where we're not able to commence certain intelligence gathering and in addition and perhaps more important in the long run we haven't done anything to solve the problem of these lawsuits the retroactive liability with the result that as they write in this letter the telecommunications companies are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to continue to help us they're all responsible to their shareholders and their shareholders don't like to see that their company is getting sued it reduces the value of the company it creates problems and costs when they try to do business with other companies other companies say well wait a minute are you involved in these lawsuits if so we don't want to enter into a new contract with you they work with companies all over the world and a lot of these companies are concerned that the american telecommunications company here is going to have this kind of exposure and they don't want to get involved in it so it can hurt business substantially as a result of which some of these companies have conveyed to our intelligence community their distress and anxiety and concern about continuing to participate in this program unfortunately through negotiations according to this letter companies are still working with us they're still participating but without them we have no program this is not something the united states government can do on its own this is something that only works if all of the companies that provide our telecommunications services are working with us on so we've got to act here pretty soon or we could well be in a situation where the very companies that are critical to the operational success of this program decide that discretion is the better part of valor on their part and they're just not going to be able to continue to help us at that point we have lost one of the most important intelligence gathering operations in this war against terrorists i want to go back to the days following september eleventh two thousand and one there was a lot of finger pointing a commission was established to try to figure out what went wrong and there were a lot of my areas identified where we should have known better and had we done things differently at least potentially nine eleven could have been prevented we found that the f b i and cia weren't talking to each other and that the justice department had constructed a sort of wall between the two even within the f b i itself which prevented one hand from communicating to the other very important information in fact there's information relating to a couple of terrorists that had they been able to talk to each other might well have resulted in these terrorists being picked up in the united states people who were directly involved in the nine eleven event and at least theoretically it could have been prevented had they been able to communicate with each other the bottom line was that retroactively after nine eleven we figured out that we could have been doing more but didn't and that report was very critical of the congress of the administration of the intelligence community of the f b i cia and others for not doing everything that could have been done to prevent nine eleven if there were to be god forbid another terrorist attack on the united states and the commission that is inevitably going to study what happened would look at the days prior to that event in the united states congress what they would find is a house of representatives that's sitting on its hands it's unwilling to take up the senate passed bill that bill passed with sixty eight senators voting yes obviously democrats and republicans voting yes a very strong bipartisan bill the president says he'll sign it he says we need it the intelligence community says we need it now it's been two weeks and we don't have a law that enables us to engage in this intelligence collection or what happens if before we get that law there's an attack or even attack after that based upon communications of terrorists that we could have intercepted but didn't because we didn't have the means to do it was going to be a lot of finger pointing and rightfully so the united states  said we're going to do our part we're going to pass this law so that there are not gaps in our intelligence collection the house of representatives continues to sit on its hands what will it take to get the house leadership to take up the senate passed  bill and send it to the president for his signature i hope it doesn't take another terrorist event and a president this debate that we're having about our policy in defeating al and how iraq fits into that is part of an overall debate about our approach to the war against militant islam the terrorists who strike innocent people and as i said in the beginning the most important thing that we can do in starting our effort in the war is to have good intelligence in this case the best often says not going to war in some foreign country not bombing somebody but finding out what these bad actors are up to and preventing them from putting their plans into effect now partially because it's been quite a long time since nine eleven and partially because it's not possible to talk about some of these events because their highly classified american public probably is not as aware as it should be of the kind of things that go on every day what happens every day is that there are all over the world thousands of would be terrorists meeting planning communicating training and in some cases carrying out their intentions  engaging in terrorist activity and because we've had good intelligence collection much of which is done through this electronic interception of communications we've been able to stop specific terrorist attacks some of these are chronicled by the communications from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence some are laid out in reports from the cia and othe unclassified reports just to mention one an effort to blow up elements of the los angeles airport l a x there are others and i've kind of forgotten which ones are classified which ones aren't so i'm going to describe any more but the reality is it's going on all the time and only by good intelligence can we find out in advance and then either infiltrate the cell work with our counterparts in another country to round up the bad guys perhaps at the plans haven't gotten to the execution stage use our knowledge to gain additional information to track other  terrorists but in any event at some point when it looks like the plan may be about to be executed either we or our allies have to come in and arrest the individuals so that the attack does not occur but we can't do that if we don't know what they're up to it's unfortunate that a lot of the information about how we collect intelligence has gotten out but it is fortunate that we have companies in the united states who are willing to cooperate with their government because they are in a position to help the government intercept these communications it just happens to be because of the way that the modern communications technology now works and we should be doing everything we can to protect these volunteers in effect they have relied in good faith on the representation of the united states government that the president had the authority to engage in these operations and their services this is these this is not my conclusion this is the conclusion of the senate intelligence committee in its report on the legislation that we passed it pointed out that it had examined the record and found that these telecommunications companies had acted in good faith so there's no reason for them to be subjected to lawsuits and unless those lawsuits go away it is quite possible that one by one the companies that are assisting us are going to conclude that it's not in their financial best interest to do so and that as much as they would like to they're simply not in a position to continue to be able to do so that would be disastrous for our intelligence gathering so as i said the fix is the legislation that passed the u s senate it's a good bill it reauthorizes this program for six more years and adds the one important additional element and that is the protection from liability it also add some additional civil liberties protections by the way for americans abroad one of our colleagues senator wyden had inserted a provision that adds an extra layer protection for an american that might happen to be abroad and find himself or herself  a target of of some of this interception because of a call made to the individual or that individual making a call to somebody else who's under surveillance and so on it's a rather rare occurrence but we provided protections so that the want would have to be obtained in that circumstance and americans civil liberties would be protected so no one should be under the assumption here that somehow or other  law lets the government loose to begin spying on people believe me there is so much information out there that we don't even have time or the ability to check out that we're not going to go out of our way to spy on people who have no reason to spy on this is simply a matter of trying to identify those instances in which known terrorists or people who have to liaise with these terrorists abroad are communicating with each other and by the way importantly if the if that communication comes into the united states we want to know who they're communicating with here because that could be the late stages of an operation that could be an indication that there is an element embedded in the united states a terrorist cell perhaps that's ready to or at least is in the process of planning to engage in some kind of attack so these are the kind of things we need to know about and which have protected the american public since two thousand and one it is no accident that america has not had an attack on our soil since two thousand and one it's also no accident that frankly the number of attacks in other places around the world is far less than would been the case had we and these other countries not had in place good intelligence gathering operations and good cooperation i might add among our intelligence services and once we find out something that needs to be acted upon so as we debate  these resolutions that focus on getting at al qaeda our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insistent that we should be focusing our efforts not on extraneous aspects of this war against terrorists but qaeda i simply say to all of you that focusing on al qaeda means first and foremost getting good intelligence on what they're up to and in today's modern world that cannot be done without a reauthorization of this law that enables us to collect this telecommunications intelligence and that's not going to happen unless the bill passes and is sent to the president and every day that goes by that the house leadership sits on the legislation that we hear in the senate passed and doesn't send that to the president is another day of vulnerability it's a day in which we will never get back the intelligence that we might have collected this is not something where we can catch up it's not something words not doing us any harm as general knew k c and ed mcconnell pointed out it is lost information forever that telephone call that we might have communicated is not going to happen again maybe a subsequent call will but we'll never have the benefit of the communication that occurred yesterday or the day before or later on today because we don't have the ability to engage in that collection i can't think of anything more important to our national security matter president than getting this legislation adopted and it's one of the reasons that we agreed with the majority leaders cloture petition to debate this question of how we should be focusing our effort on al qaeda because we wanted to ensure that the american people understood what's at stake here and understood what is at risk by the house of representatives not taking up and passing the senate legislation on intelligence collections abroad so madam president i hope that the house leadership will take this up quickly  get the bill to the president he can sign it into law and americans will once again be protected by the most advanced techniques and technologies that we have i say to my colleague from tennessee is here our distinguished conference chairman all relinquished the floor that i thought the congress got off to a pretty good start this year when the president in the house of representatives agreed on an economic stimulus package all of us had different ideas about it but they agreed on something sent over here we had a what i would call a principled debate about a disagreement about whether to spend forty billion more dollars on it and we objected to that that was dropped then we passed it sent the president he signed it and that spirit of having a principled argument resolving it helping the american people got us off to a good start we did the same thing on the on the legislation that  senator kyl the senator from arizona just described was a major force in that that was a principle debate as well samuel huntington the distinguished harvard professor who's a former president american political science association says that most of our conflicts in our democracy are conflicts between or among principles with which most of us agree for example liberty and security each american has a right to liberty each american values security and we debated that here for nearly six months from august through today what if if we're going to intercept  communications from terrorists overseas calling into this country under what conditions may we do that and still respect our traditions of liberty security versus liberty differences of opinion the judiciary committee got in the middle of it the intelligence committee was in the middle of it in the end the intelligence committee produced a piece of legislation by a vote of thirteen to two a bipartisan piece of work that they believe respected liberty and security and after a good debate here where early seventy senators agreed it's about as well as you can do in the united states senate when you have a major difference of  opinion off that went to the house of representatives well what happened here was an example of what americans like to see from their legislators what happened in the house of representatives is not what americans  like to see what i think most americans want to see in washington is not that we always agree i mean this is a debating society it's the united states senate the issues are here because that's what people like then it goes over to the house of representatives let me put in the words of some tennessee folks last week i was in tennessee for ten days last  when we had time off here and the most frequently asked question most frequently made comment made something like this and i'll paraphrase but just a little bit senator alexander someone in the back of the r city might rise up and say i have a question for you how is it that the house of representatives has time to investigate baseball has time to play politics with the white house staff members has time to take a ten day vacation but doesn't have time to deal with intelligence bill and i had to say to them i'm disappointed in what happened in the house of representatives because they did so well with the economic stimulus package that i thought we were off to the kind of start that the surveillances it means fewer companies individuals willing to cooperate with our government in overhearing conversations between those who would destroy us when they call in here to talk about and it means we're less safe as a result of that and my hope would be that we can deal with this intelligence bill quickly and probably the house of representatives certainly capable of that very good men and women there we recognize that when we basically adopted the house's economic stimulus package with minor adjustments some senators said well the senate ought to have a lot to say about that what we most of us in the senate are rarely guilty of an unexpressed thought that's true but it is not a bad idea for us also to recognize wisdom and good ideas when they come from the from the other from the other part of the capital when we saw in the economic stimulus package some wise decision making and for the most part adopted it with some amendments my hope would be th representatives would do the same with the senate sixty eight vote decision on the intelligence bill my understanding is that there is a majority of democrats and republicans in the house of representatives today who agree with the senate bill who would vote for it if it were brought up and if they will do that that would be that would that would be very helpful i see the senator from oklahoma is here where would he like to make some remarks  between now and four o'clock or well why don't mate why don't i take about i'd like to take four or five minutes to say a word about william buckley and then turn the floor over to the senate would you  remarks the senator from oklahoma be recognized for fifteen minutes president the news came today that william f buckley guides for most americans that brings back a lot of memories since the early hundred fifty s he has been synonymous with public television god and man at yale was an important book even though he was a very young m william f buckley style his choice of words is manner of speaking and his unfailing courtesy have set an example for debaters of important issues in this country for more than half a century hundred eighty four a couple of years after i had been a guest on firing line which was william buckley's television show i sat next to him a dinner it was a howard baker fund raising roast here in washington d c and william buckley was the master of ceremonies i wrote about that visit and a little book i put out after i was governor called steps along the way when do you write i ask him any time he replied books are about the only thing i write  i do them in switzerland after i ski between about five thirty and seven p m i told him that when our family had visited chartwell william churchill's winston churchill's former secretary said that churchill sometimes dictated by of thousand words a night buckley was surprised i could do eleven hundred or so in a couple of hours he said sometimes more maybe up to twenty eight hundred words at a time but five thousand would be a very productive night with the advent of computer technology i can know exactly what i do each time i write for example my last book took one hundred twelve hours when do you make corrections i ask him i do that in about thirty minutes the next morning before i go skiing you mean that you finish off the last day's work so you can be ready to start when you return from skiing that's right then i send a transcript of five friends when the transcripts come back i put the five edited version side by side and decide what changes to make what about your columns i ask him how long do they take to write you mean after i get them in mind he said yes about twenty to thirty minutes westbrook pegler once told me it took him a levon hours to do a column do you make changes asking no said william buckley i've been doing it for nineteen no twenty two years i know the rhythm the internal consistency of the column i have it down i don't change it that would be like asking a jazz pianist to change his improvisation that was william buckley in of people he loved his family he was of course a wonderful conservative leader he changed the way many americans thought about our government and our society and he always seemed to have the right thing to say in one team ninety six after i had competed for the presidency i was at some dinner he walked all the way across the room you never know what to say to someone who's lost an election this kind of like what do you say to someone at a funeral he walked all the way across the room and put his hand on my shoulder and said that was a noble thing that you did and so he struck me as one of the nicest things and he has said to me after having lost an election i will miss william buckley so will our country so will the conservative movement my family and i send our condolences to the buckley family we know they proud of his life that they will miss him and i'm glad to have these few minutes on the senate floor to remember womenfolk these contributions to our to our public life  better president i would like i might be understand that i have fifteen minutes i might want to take a little bit longer than that let me ask that the recognize it as if in morning conclusion of his remarks i'd like to be recognized as if in morning business for up to thirty minutes troops who risked their lives every day to defend the united states of america i voted for every dollar requested to fully fund our troops and against every effort to dictate the tactics of war from the halls of congress however last year i began to express my concerns about the it period in conditions in iraq and called on the iraqi government to do more and to do more quickly support and these were benchmarks on the ways that the iraqi government could and should move and its country forward i'm glad to say that since general took charge in iraq conditions have improved and the benchmarks have been met i'm glad to say that since general petraeus took charge in iraq conditions have there because even though if things have changed baghdad is safe we just aren't getting the coverage from the press of the united states or the press of the world that that the change deserves because everybody in america should know what i'm saying in this speech the very simple fundamental friends that have happened have happened since general petraeus said about with his approach that he told the country about named it he told the president about it and he didn't ask for too much in order to exit and exercise his leadership moreover an iraqi army brigade recently deployed itself for operations against al qaida partially because of these efforts there is less violence in iraq now and when the insurgency began iraqi government has passed and  lot for the country sunni's many said it would never be done it was a government has further passed a budget maybe we and even pass hours this year but they pass theirs for fifty billion dollars or two thousand and eight that's a compromise between the sunni's the shiites and the kurds they were able to sit down and solve their problems their budget problems and t that's truly significant and truly different and obviously indicates that things have changed for the better all revenues are going to iraq's provinces to fund reconstruction efforts that's another one that everybody said would never happen they will never be able to reach agreement on that they have and then even the new york times has noted progress in iraq reporting that the newly pass legislation in iraq and then i quote has the partial potential to spur reconciliation between sunni and shiites and set the country on a road to a more representative government starting w with new provincial elections that's really something when the new york times would choose to say that they haven't covered it very well but at least the words i read are words found in the new york times which would clearly indicate that even day they have little faith and they have a quick judgment on them on the war and in iraq had to say what i just have quote madam president i'm proud to be here today to note this progress the progress of the iraqi government because it's it is the progress of the iraqi people the people that we went there to help it's their progress their victory their wins and yet we are proud that it was led by an american who has an exceptional apparently an exceptional capacity in the in these areas the areas that festered and cause these people to remain far apart until the last eighteen months they have made significant notable progress in the past six months and are on the right path to a stable and secure iraq general petraeus and our soldiers is serve our banks our thanks and support for their efforts in iraq and mr president for all members i will have a vote at six thirty tonight on the second feingold amendment nurture piece of legislation following that we will if cloture is invoked of course there's thirty hours on this motion to proceed i've had a number of conversations today with the distinguished republican leader and i will discuss later this evening and tomorrow how we are going to work through the rest of this week my goal as has been indicated a number of times in the last twenty four hours on the floor is to make sure that sometime this week we are on the housing stimulus package and we'll do that and we will see if we can do it with the with an agreement rather than one ing out all the time so i as i've indicated earlier day mr president i think the debate on this arac legislation is been good friends on the minority think the war's going great we have some concerns on this side i just think passing madam president i had a meeting in my office about an hour ago we have a wonderful facility being built in las vegas is a performing arts center and i'll be a wonderful it will be like the kennedy center and they've read all that fifty million dollars of this four hundred seventy million dollar project i told th are assembled i said this is the same amount of money is being spent one day in iraq four and twenty million dollars money they've raised but it's been a good debate good discussion i think it's good that the body disc spent some time on this very important issue and there are one thing it's been really quite good and i commend centers on both sides yes it's been a very civil debate and we have a significant disagreement on the situation in iraq but we have had i think a good debate in america people i think should feel good about the discussion and that it's been very temperate and dictated by actual feelings on both sides the housing issue it would be our intent to get to a vote or to get on and want to either get to a vote or get on based upon a consent agreement that subject matter no later than some time at a civilized hour tomorrow i was just handed a note here i would ask consent at the time at five fifty five today that's  war the liberation in iraq and the good things that are happening this surge and can you go back to give us a better perspective as to how we got here in the first place i  that time this is what precipitated nine eleven the clinton administration came in and this is the amount of the actual d o d budget at that time this is a baseline this is a very simple chart but it tells us a lot if we were to merely have maintained the level of defense spending as it took place fiscal year zero one now this was what was actually would have happened if we didn't do anything else but down here the red line indicates were president clinton made his budget request and that was a neo d o d request now if you forget about the middle line the difference between his request and if we just maintained the same position that we were in in  scal year ninety three it would have been four hundred twelve billion dollars less the other words in that timeframe in that short timeframe we would have cut defense real spending in  constant dollars by four hundred twelve billion dollars now the congress didn't let that happen the middle line this this actual line here that's the green line that's what it actually was budgeted so what we did is we we went and said no to the white house you're not taking good enough care of our needs our military needs and so we raised it by about ninety nine billion dollars over that period of time now that means the real shortfall was three hundred thirteen billion dollars in that timeframe not only show that chart because there was an attitude in this country at that time that  there weren't any real serious problems in that we were people get to stay in the world's greatest superpower and we procreate more money for defense than anybody else does i want to continue that way and that there are some things that were going on that i'd like to to to remind ourselves here that was called an acquisition holiday holiday or a peace dividend and so i think it is more of a holiday and leadership at that time international terrorism took to the forefront as bin laden began his war against freedom afghanistan was you know used as a training ground for terrorists and the taliban regime allowed al qaeda unfettered mobility were on a holiday holiday they were fighting back and they took advantage of this in some major attacks somehow i think the memory of the american people isn't very isn't very long because they forgot about these attacks that were taking place from the first attack on the world trade center there's nine hundred ninety three feb twenty sixth as a car bomb was planted in the underground parking garage time this is going on in northern africa their presence was very visible at that time in further on down in south eastern africa we had the embassy bombings in kenya in know that as this squeeze is taking place that has become a very prominent place for it in for the terrorist so you had you had djibouti were starting to put troops in there but we had the that suicide bomb that was a major thing i just let us know it reminded us that we could have a ship the u s s cole at that time and have nothing but it's just a little a little outrigger going out there in blowing it up and causing  the operation infinite reach included cruise missile attacks against afghanistan and sudan there is no real change ministration was distracted at that time this inadequate response has been cited as a factor in bouldering the al qaeda to undertake further plans yet we continued on our holiday at that time in operation restore hope we became in burrowed in somalia and we remember the button in the streets of mogadishu when finally the people woke up and they saw the naked bodies dragged through the streets president clinton directed u s forces to stop all actions against said he'd accept those required in self defense and we withdrew from the country shortly thereafter you know it's kind of hard for america start getting in the habit of withdrawing we stake out our position and we have historically stood strong and carried out b ignored the rising threats against our national security organised our military leaving a bold challenge for the next administration the first rumsfeld confirmation was rather light because what we did at that time is try to determine what our needs were going to be for the future we had to rethink where we were before and at that  time we were trying to re evaluate where we were and we were recalling some of the really bad things that happened we remember so well the one nine hundred ninety one persian gulf war and there was a group that went over as a bipartisan group i remember tony at that time he'd been the democrat leader in the house of representatives i was in the house at the time we had the first freedom fight and we spent a group over to two to  kuwait and it was the day the day that the war was officially over and the problem is the iraqis didn't know that the war was over at that time and so we had the first freedom flight we went over there alexander haig i ran into him just the other day and we going to relive that experience that we had over there because we had with a very special guest he was the ambassador kuwaiti ambassador to the united states now he had his daughter they were a family of nobility they had a palace on the persian gulf but of course they had been there because that was a war zone that was that was kuwait and so we went over there this group of nine of us to democrats and republicans and i remember when the wind shifted the the oil fields were still burning it was it was it was a mess over there but they wanted to go back to invest or wanted to go back and see what their house on the persian gulf looked like if it had been damaged substantia in the war and when we got there we found that his house had been used for one of saddam hussein's headquarters and his daughter she was either nine seven eight or nine years old and i remember so well because she wanted to go  and see see her bedroom and the dolls and all that and we went up into this mansion on the persian gulf beautiful place only to find out that her bedroom had been used as a torture chamber in their body parts stuck to the walls i saw a little boy that had is air cut off a little boy maybe six or seven years old because they found him carrying a little tiny american flag and that was back at the time when the the unconscionable murders were taking place where saddam hussein after that was over started killing anyone who the suspect in torturing him to death and there are stories documented that people would beg to be dropped into lowered into vats of acid head first so they would die quicker the the being put through grinding machines like your shredding documents the open graves the documentation of weddings that were for a while taking place many of them outdoors that's the way they did it over and in that area and saddam's sons at that time they were alive and the regime was in there and they would go through and they would bust up weddings and rape the girls and take them in very i'm alive and i actually looked down into those open graves and people were so quick to forget what a monster that was i've often said even if that had if that had not happened if we didn't have the problems with the terrorist activity in iraq and the fact that they are training people in iraq to to to be involved in terrorist activity kate it was very prominent even if that had not been the case how could we as a country allow the hundreds of thousands of people being tortured to death in cruel way i don't think we could certainly we couldn't in in iraq now there's been a lot of discussion over the years about weapons of mass destruction this is not that you know those of us who are over there are not i would say to you madam president that while i have not been this many times to iraq i've actually been in the area twenty seven different trips twenty seven different times sometimes it was in centcom some the horn of africa and other areas but see the terrorist activity in the war was not just direct it was in the whole surrounding area so in all those times that i was there i had a chance to really on a first hand base and see what was involved and we know that we had to go in there and we know that we had to go in there and finish had been started in iraq now there are three things that were started number one we had to liberate iraq from the tyrannical leader and we've already talked about it number two eliminate a safe haven for terrorists and their training camps and then number three to help the iraqi people create a free and democratic country strategically located in the middle east where we have the greatest needs well for that number one the liberation of iraq after the persian gulf and we called  e first freedom fly into into into kuwait but that liberation was necessary to put an end to saddam hussein's regime of torture and when they talked about weapons of mass destruction yes the weapon of mass message traction was not found we know they were there they were used in the kurds in the north he said on the scene use weapons of mass destruction to painfully murder thousands of his own people using gas and burned him alive and that was happening but nonetheless and so it really wasn't for those of us who were aware that was the real reason if you look at the second reason they rack was a major training area where a lot of us who are familiar with some air and ramadi a similar forgotten or may never have known about some of the other areas was an international terrorist training camp in northeastern iraq near the iranian border run by  salaam known terrorist organization the based on information from the united states army special forces forces operators who led the attack said it is indeed more than plausible that  members trained in that particular training camp now one of the interesting places where this was taking place was a place called salomon pak the impact they have and it was i think still there to this day on the ground is an old fuselage of the seven hundred seven and that was used to train people on how to hijack airplanes i've often wondered myself if that could have been where the perpetrators of nine eleven got the training no way of knowing we never those down and that was it made that a low i would say that that was a lone would be enough motivation for us to go in and liberate the people of iraq but the third one is to help their racket create a free and democratic country iraq is trying to do what we try to do two hundred thirty years ago and they're risking their lives as we risk our lives some two hundred thirty years ago and they're seeking a constitution a problem of freedom democracy these are things that they are trying to accomplish and i think of that first election that took place that the luge when the iraqi security forces were going to vote i was there i was in for those actually for all three elections i believe that i remember the record security forces in that first election everybody remembers the purple fingers so they could identify who was voting in those elections and these guys these security forces went out and voted the day before the election they didn't wait for the elections they were doing it the day before so that they would be there on election day to provide the security people are risking their lives to go out and vote and we know the cases of people being attacked by the terrorists to keep them from doing it and then there because of the purple fingers but these guys were gladly going in there and at that time going to vote and then return the next day to to protect our people that were there are men and women serving in iraq or providing the iraqis the same inspiration that our forefathers provided us iraqi iraqis becoming an example to the world of how to reject care and confront those who practice it in the world these now the citizens are realizing their potential signing up as concerned citizens sons of iraq seventy two thousand and that is pretty amazing thing when you look and you see that instead of the mass graves and all these things you're seeing a mass participation in iraq they're returning to normalcy now a lot of people are saying you know is this surgery are they working now there's no one out there i don't believe anyone is out there who can consciously see did not i that the surge has worked is about a year ago that general petraeus went in and what happened three things happened one was that petraeus by far the greatest guy for the job out there and i don't think anyone that happened was that they were there been so many resolutions like the one that's before us right now is that i refer to those resolutions of surrender that people got the attention of a lot of the religious leaders i often draw a distinction from my own personal experience i have met with the political leaders of course like all the other members who have gone over there i've done it more because i've been there more times but the religious leaders are the ones that have the greatest impact on what's going on  in iraq and up until this is the statement no one has refuted up until about a year ago our defense intelligence people would attend and monitor the friday night mosque meetings that took place throughout iraq and these are the clerics and the moms the religious leaders prior to that time eighty five percent of the messages that were that were preached i guess you would say in th mosques were and i merican to my knowledge there hasn't been an anti american message given from a mosque in iraq since last april because they realize that they if we leave then the terrorists will move in and so that's why we're getting and it's been talked about by many people on the floor about the change in attitude no change the neighborhood watch programs we in my hometown of tulsa oklahoma we have a neighborhood watch  washington and they have over there they have citizens private citizens that have the courage to go out without any arms and confront terrorists where they can through their own intelligence and sheer numbers determine where there are r p g eason and i e d that are not detonated so they and then they identify and buy little orange paint cans where they draw a circle around there and then then we can go in there and detonate these and save many many lives well we are today experiencing all that hell i can remember when our troops that were working out of baghdad we come back to the green zone every night they don't do that and they go out and they actually bed down and live with the iraqi security forces and their families develop intimate relationships with them and and it's a totally different thing the all together i can remember it was a way in the world you could walk through the markets in baghdad the last i was there i walk through and i've intentionally didn't take anyone with me except an interpreter because i didn't want to give that image that you're you have armed guards and all that and a member stopping in talking to people i always like to single out people are holding babies and and they have this love for us that they didn't have before so we now see these changes that are taking place we see that the basic economics are train taking root in iraqis are spending money on iraqi projects the iraqis are taking back their control of their country and we're helping the iraqi people create a free and democratic country where representation  their pension their and acted laws defining provincial and central government roles and responsibilities to delineate each person as opposed to the distinction between the police in the security forces what their functions are what their missions are past two thousand and eight they did sooner than we did in this country and they acted in an amnesty law that could lead to the release of thousands of detainees removing a stumbling block standing in the way of reconciliation more than any previous legislation these new initiatives have the potential to spur reconciliation between the sunni shia shiites in the set and set the country on a road to a more representative government starting with new pr elections now in the future what it where we go from here our nation has paid in continues to pay a heavy price people in this chamber have talked about every price their right it's not cheap it's very expensive but they have praised it we've paid the heavy price in dollars and lives of our sons and daughters brothers and sisters and we're doing that if a difficult thing that just as americans have always tried to do the right thing we are doing the right thing in iraq iraq is at a decisive turning point in their journey toward democracy and the fight is is is not about today or tomorrow but about many tomorrows to come about the future and about our grandchildren's grandchildren and the world they live in you know it's not just iraq if you look at all the right now a lot of concern is taking place in iran but energy in some of the people some of the political leaders in the things that they are promoting but one of the greatest obstacle is that they have in iran is that they're right next door in iraq there are so many people who who share family members and they're looking over wistfully and seeing that people are getting married without without the disruptions that girls are actually getting an education you know this is simply this is not the iraq that they knew before so these things are happening as secretary gates said if we were to withdraw leaving iraq in chaos al qaida most certainly would use and our province as another base from which to plan operations not only inside iraq but first of all in the neighborhood and then potentially against the united states the al qaeda is not the only threat to american our and our  ideas mention a minute ago i met in a jog he said on the twenty eighth of august of zero seven years to a short while ago he said soon we will see a huge power vacuum in that region now what he was talking about is it's not a resolution that we're considering right now is saying you know a cut and run resolution would create a power vacuum what else did he say he said this expecting this defeatism expecting that we would vote positive which we're not we're not to vote for this resolution we know that we've had the same resolution up it was seventy one to twenty four the last time we had a vote but but nonetheless he said that of course we are prepared to fill the gaps so you have iran filling the gap that would be there if we were to get up and leave in the tories moments that we're having right now iran's nuclear work continues including a recent doubling of their enrichment of uranium which could easily be used as a part of nuclear weapons program and is stationed in the hands of an energy in the last two years iran has continued to develop ballistic missile technology launching missiles over two thousand kilometers the coalition forces have intercepted iran arms shipments and in iraq including materials that are used to make explosive leave formed penetrators e f e s and the most deadly of that i e d which are being used against american troops that's what iran's doing today the coalition forces have also detained iranian agents in iraq lacked of a secure and stable iraq means instability in the middle east in a clear avenue for terror and oppression  spread instability in the middle east will continue to spread as it already has into africa asia europe in ultimately find its way to our shores we know what's happening right now in africa i know probably more than in many of the others john q four in ghana all of them about the threat that they feel terrorism in all throughout africa and in our infinite wisdom here is our decision a few years ago to go in and help the africans build five african brigades so that as this moves in to their area that they are able to fight off terrorism without using our troops and we have such programs as the  eight programs we are arming and equipping train equip programs for these countries and so these are things that we're helping them do so we can avoid having to be in the front lines of the battle against the terrorists they can do that too so i can what they can not give them victory in iraq in the middle east so we must not try to micromanager military one of the two resolutions that are on the floor right now would actually micromanage it is if we in our infinite wisdom in the united states senate are smarter than general petraeus odierno and all these people who are professionals yes i was in the united states army many years ago so i have some hands on experience in this type of thing certainly not  professionals so the worst thing we can do is to try to get in there and micromanage our military and placing restrictions upon restriction how they can fight how many troops they have to withdraw what our troop strength should be over there and at the same time if anything that we do over  defeat these things but in a way i'm glad i'm glad senator feingold did bring these up because this gives us a fork to talk to the american people about things they may not be getting in the media it's interesting t meat used to be when i go over to iraq the first thing the kids over there would ask me why doesn't the media like me they don't really talk that way anymore i mean even people who are and i this administration people like katie couric went over and observed what's going on and what you go and observe you can see that we are winning this is working in this freedom is now the liberation is taking place so i would say that a president i know my thirty minutes is expired but we're in here to  to continue what we have started the worst thing we could do right now is to take this out of the success of the hands of the military who are successfully winning in the in the liberation of iraq and starting bring this politically from the senate floor this isn't going to happen we are winning we're there now and it's so refreshing after these years yes it's been a long time people keep reminding is this is longer than world war two and all these things i know that because each year i've had an opportunity to spend time with air quality time and seen the changes are made and we're finally to the point where the plan by this genius called david petraeus is working so we don't want mention present i know that we are on a thirty hour plus culture period dealing with piece of legislation relating to iraq i want to speak about something else there but let me at least begin by describing a somewhat different view the fact is osama bin laden was hung until he was dead and by his neck this brutal tyrant is dead saddam hussein they said osama bin laden i suppose most of us wish that saddam that osama bin laden rather had been brought to justice but it is saddam hussein who has been brought to justice in the country of iraq and he's dead the iraqis have their own constitution because they voted for it the iraqis have their own government because they voted for it and the american taxpayer has spent sixteen billion dollars training three hundred fifty thousand police and soldiers in iraq for security purposes now the question is do the iraqis who have been trained for police protection and security both in the police force and as soldiers do they have the will to provide for their own security if they do not this country cannot do it for any great length of time we've been there six years and we're going to leave iraq the question is not whether the question is when and the american people are not going to have us in iraq for a canon fifteen and twenty years this is not the case we're spending massive amounts of money but sixteen billion dollars a month last year the president asked for one hundred ninety three billion dollars i'm urgency funding for the year that's sixteen billion dollars a month four billion dollars a week it's time that we begin to understand we have needs here at home to begin taking care of things here at home we're spending money on hundreds of water projects in iraq we're spending money on road building in iraq we're spending money on health clinics in iraq and yet we got a president's budget sent to us here saying we don't have enough money for those things in our country will cut dramatically water projects in the united states will cut back on all these investments in the united states even as we're making those substantial investments in the country of iraq my point is that at some point we're going to have to bring american troops home we can't keep doing as the president suggests and that is spending emergency money by sending soldiers to iraq and putting this on top of the debt so that when they come back from iraq the soldiers can help pay the debt that is not the right way to approach what's happening in the country of iraq so all of us want the same thing for our country we want our country to succeed we want our country to confront and defeat terrorists and  laden osama bin laden is the person that held that the heads of al qaeda that he is in a safe and secure haven they we're told by our national intelligence estimate in northern pakistan there ought not be one square inch on the face of this earth safer secure for those that murdered americans on nine eleven and yet seven years later this administration has not brought the leader or and the leadership of the terrorist organization that attacked our country to justice that is a failure in my judgment and it's a failure that results from taking our eye off the ball and having too few troops in afghanistan allowing osama bin laden light bin laden to escape through tora bora and then invading iraq and committing ourselves to that over a link to a period of time the result is the greatest terrorist threat according the national intelligence estimate the greatest terrorist threat against our country at this point is that leadership of al qaeda they are existing in a safe or secure haven in northern pakistan i mean it seems to me like seven years after nine eleven that has to be considered a failure my hope would be that we with all of us would engage in ways that begin to devote our attention to the greatest terrorist threat facing our country and that is as the national intelligence estimate says the leadership of al qaeda they are recruiting and building new training camps and and strengthening themselves even as we are tied down in the country of iraq spending sixteen down sixteen billion dollars a month when i'm president i would like to ask consent to speak in morning business for fifteen minutes on another subject soldier's medals you will see two bronze stars a silver star the distinguished service cross the second highest medal given in our country multiple purple heart it's want to tell you about woody keeble a big man well over six foot well over two hundred pounds on monday of next week at two thirty in the afternoon at the white house president bush will present the medal of honor to woody keeble as i said he's been dead for twenty six years his wife blossom rossum keeble died last summer we had hoped this would be done before his wife died but that was not to be the case but i want to tell my colleagues about this because it is so unusual that our next monday a medal of honor will be presented pasta mostly to a soldier who demonstrated great acts of courage and most of his life there he was wounded at least twice in the korean war and three times in world war two scuse me twice in world war two and three times in the korean war let me describe what he did so that you will know why he is that being given the medal of honor all of these years later he served with the national guard company become a famed company in our state the one hundred sixty four infantry regiment shortly after joining in one thousand nine hundred eighty two would he keep a found himself in guadalcanal and some of the hand to hand combat the most aggressive and dangerous hand to hand combat in the second world war he was in combat in the south pacific until the war ended saw a great deal of combat one of his fellow soldiers said the safest place to be was next to woody woody was an unbelievable so and then the korean war came along what he earned a bronze star purple hearts in the second world war then the korean war came along at age thirty four this lakota sioux indian signed up again and he said north korea and october one thousand nine hundred fifty one he was the acting but the platoon leader of the first platoon of g company casualties were very heavy and because the company's officers were killed he ended up in charge of the first platoon the second platoon and the third platoon because the others the other leaders had been killed they told me that the weather was brutally cold in north korea at the time and the enemy the chinese were entrenched on a hill rugged cliff and the this side of that mountain was a very difficult thing that the u s troops had to take and so what he keeble in charge of these three platoons made three attempts to take that hill from the chinese the chinese had three machine gun nests on top of the hill and trenches with soldiers in the trenches defending that hill three times these three platoons with what he cable leading them went up the hill three times they were repelled and rejected and they had very heavy casualties with a fair number of soldiers being killed well after three times trying to after three occasions trying to take that h decided that he would try it by himself and with grenades and a rifle he left apparently on his back in his belly and a whole series of approaches they said through very heavy machine gun on fire and through a blizzard of grenades would he cable climb that hill scaled a hill went around the pill boxes and knocked out all three machine guns by himself they later extracted eighty three pieces of shrapnel from his body eighty three pieces of shrapnel it was alive and he wouldn't leave the battlefield until all of his men were on top of the hill in a defensive position and only then would he allow himself to be evacuated all of the members of his regiment signed a letter putting him in for the medal of honor and it never got from the battlefield to the pentagon they did it the second time a month later and it never got from the battlefield to the pentagon but you can see the medals he did get multiple purple hearts wounded five times two bronze stars a silver star the distinguished service cross the second highest medal it was a well decorated soldier he went to korea to help teach those kids how to fight and it turns out he's the one that claimed the hill and saved his soldiers knocked out three machine gun nest by himself well years later many years later the question was asked why was he not given the medal of honor and those with whom he served began piecing together the action that day with all of those that were eyewitnesses and a part of the action on that hill in north korea a woman named there mary helm especially took it upon herself over the years to try to reconstruct the information and she did it took a lot of time to do so and then it was sent to the united states secretary of the army with the request that  review the original request that had never been received at the pentagon that would be key will be awarded the medal of honor they were notified all of these who had worked on this request that such a consideration was not able to be made because there is a three year statute of limitations on the request for a medal of honor and they could only get the secretary of the army's office consider this request if that statue of limitations has w at the request of those who had worked on it i and my colleague from north dakota senator conrad and colleagues from south dakota johnson and soon i introduced a piece of legislation an appropriations bill that way that's three years statutes of the secretary of the army could look at this case and decide and so the sector the army began evaluating what happened on that hill in north korea on a cold day when woody cable was a real hero and he eventually decided having looked at all the information sioux indian who served this country in two wars was wounded five times he indeed deserved the medal of honor he sent it to the secretary of defense with the recommendation that the army had approved and the secretary of defense approved the medal of honor it was then sent to the white house for review and they approved the medal of honor and this coming monday at two thirty in the afternoon i will be at the white house witnessing a ceremony at the invitation of the president in which the president presents a medal of honor past the mostly to a really remarkable courageous american soldier named woodrow wilson keeble the only sue indian ever to have received the medal of honor someone who served this country with unbelievable courage and distinction and valor he came back to waapa to north dakota and worked at the wahpeton indian school much of his life suffered stroke significant health problems and died twenty six years later i wanted to simply call attention to this because i know that moment won't pass without i notice because the president is making this presentation on monday but i don't want to pass without  those who read the record of the recording of the united states senate to understand this was an extraordinary american we're hearing a lot of discussion these days about the bill on the floor of the senate dealing with iraq and about who stands up for soldiers who cares about american soldiers the flag the fact is every single person in this chamber cares about american soldiers wants to support them understands that they get up in the morning in some parts of this world interact especially they strap on body army before the body armor before they go out because they know there's a chance they can be killed or harm we understand what soldiers are doing for this country all of us the one thing that unite chamber i believe is that we want to do right by american soldiers and i think the story of what he keeble is a story that ought to inspire all of us about what soldiers do for our country and i've told my colleagues previously about another soldier another american indian his name was edmund young eagle he went to war he was from the standing rock sioux tribe of north dakota he went to war and he was in africa northern africa he and he was in europe and he came back lived on the standing rock sioux tribe in never had very much had kind of a tough life and at the end of his life was lying in a hospital bed at the v a hospital in fargo north dakota his sister asked if i would get the earned in the second world war i never received i did and i took them to the v a hospital on a sunday morning in fargo north dakota the doctors and nurses came in and crowded into his room and edmund young eagle who at the time i didn't know was going to die seven days later of lung cancer at many on the bill was a sick man but very proud that morning we crank his hospital bed up to a c position and then i pinned on his pajama tops a roll of medal that this american indian had earned serving his country in the second world war and as sick as he was he said quietly to me this is one of the proudest days of my life seated on his hospital bed wearing his pajama tops with his military medals there are so many whose names we won't talk about on the floor of the senate today but i do say what he cable and edmund young eagle are just two of thousands millions of american soldiers over the years who have refresh this democracy by willing being willing to risk their lives and so i wanted to call my attention of the united states senate to woodrow wilson keeble and i'm enormously proud him and his family and his memory and anxious to be at the white house on monday morning when he receives possumus leave the medal of honor and then president i want to make just a couple of additional comments on another subject and have it is a separate part of the record the price of oil is bouncing around at one hundred dollars a barrel the price of gas is up at three for more dollars per gallon you know there are people that cared about having to get  at the bank to fill their tank and the question is what's happening with the oil let me tell you something in the energy committee we've had people come and testify to us and say there isn't a bit of justification for the price of a barrel of oil to be over fifty five or sixty dollars a barrel right now so why is one hundred dollars a barrel two reasons one we've got unbelievable speculation a carnival of greed hedge funds neck deep in the futures market speculating on oil we've got investment banks for the first time that are actually buying oil storage so they can buy or oil stored keep it off the market and sell it later when the price is higher there is the most unbelievable speculation in the futures market that is pushing up oil and it's nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand and there ought to be a full and complete investigation and i'm asking the g a o to do that but too there's another issue going on and i find it just preposterous number do everything i can in the coming days and weeks to stop it do you know that even as the price of oil is bouncing up at one hundred dollars a barrel this government this department of energy is putting oil underground for storage we are taking or oil and royalty and kind payments off of the gulf of mexico and instead of selling the oil and putting in the supply to put downward pressure on price we're putting fifty and sixty thousand barrels every single day underground in the strategic petroleum reserve now i think having a strategic petroleum reserve is fine you know save for a rainy day save for our security put some away i understand that but why would you do that when well prices one hundred dollars a barrel the strategic petroleum reserve is ninety seven percent full and we're taking fifty and sixty thousand barrels a day and sticking it underground that's preposterous and at the towards the second half of this year that we putting one hundred twenty five thousand barrels a day underground there ought not be one additional barrel go underground at this point it out of going to the supply  the fact is i use teach a little economics i understand supply demand if you decrease supply you increase prices just a fact so this administration by demanding that they're putting this royalty in kind of oil or getting off the gulf of mexico by demanding they put it underground into spro the strategic petroleum reserve is pushing up the price of oil and pushing up the price of gas in fact we had a witness testify that said this is a sweet light crude that's a subset of oil and a much more valuable kind of oil and one witness mr regular said that he believes just that amount sticking it underground by this administration has increased the price of oil and gas by ten percent what's our doing increasing the price of oil and gas by ten percent one of they think to somebody's got their wires crossed someplace and could they please see if they can figure out maybe with some common sense what they ought to do when oil so hundred dollars a barrel and that is stop putting oil underground and put it into the marketplace so we put some downward pressure just say to the secretary and to those who have made this decision one way or another i'm going to win on this issue we're not going to allow you to continue to stick oil underground when the price of oil was hundred dollars a barrel and the price of gas is ranging up between three and a half and four dollars a gallon we're just not going to lie to continue to do that this congress is going to use some common sense and say stop it madam president that was therapeutic to say my my hope would be that it's some point soon i'll have a chance to offer that we're all going to have a chance to vote on that and i'm going to sisterly vote on that and i believe this congress is going to tell this administration just stop it use a reservoir of common sense don't stick oil underground put it in a supply and put downward pressure on there is an order that the senator from wisconsin will be recognized five to six there have been and there is no other speaker i present to my colleague from california i've got a few minutes i'd like to speak we're short coming nearer the hour and i don't know we've been alternating back and forth but i'm quire my either depreciated i i really only need to speak for less than ten minutes if i might because i've been sitting here for a very long time  man president i want to thank my friend and colleague and let me say i will be brief because i think the message i have is a pretty straightforward message and that is that it's time for a change in iraq is really been a long time in coming we've been there five years longer than we were in world war two it is time for a change in the ria in iraq it's time for a good change now what does that mean it means that it's time for the iraqis to stand up and fight for themselves we know that the violence there continues we know that fifteen percent of that violence is being perpetrated by foreign fighters al and the rest eighty five percent is iraqi on iraqi ethnic violence now if the iraqis aren't ready to stop hurting each other blow each other up it seems to me that we if they are not ready to give that up then we need to be ready to start pulling our troops out and it's pretty clear to me after five years that all our presence is doing at this point is acting as a recruiting tool for al qaeda and because we have this open ended commitment some on the other side are talking about fifty to one hundred years there really isn't anything that's causing leverage on our side to exert that leverage on the iraqis they're not fulfilling the benchmarks in the government that this administration said they had said they had to do so here we have a situation where we've now lost thirty nine hundred seventy two fighters garside twenty one percent of those were either born in california or were recruited from california from bases there that is a hurt to our state more than eight hundred twenty nine thousand two hundred seventy five wounded some of them grievously wounded many more with traumatic brain injuries post traumatic stress the suicide rate is getting off the charts and there's no way out there's no plan there never has been a plan and it seems to me this open ended commitment has to stop in the final bill essentially says look we're going to have a very responsible withdraw date there but we're going to start it within one hundred twenty days of the bill and we're going to shift the mission so that it continues training iraqis by the way i don't know if i mention this we have paid to train four hundred forty thousand iraqi taxpayers of our country four hundred forty thousand iraqis we are spending ten billion dollars a month and that leads me to my final point of why i wanted this little bit of times after noon we have to start looking at what this is costing us i say it's time for america let's hold it up this way we are short changing our children we need to provide health insurance to many of our children to provide health insurance to ten million uninsured children for five years man a president would cost us what it costs for five and a half months in iraq to enroll all ed eligible three to four year olds in headstart for one year which cost us three months in iraq to enroll two point five million kids in afterschool programs and boy do i have a feeling for that one because i work with senator ensign to set up the first afterschool program and it's been shorted seven days in iraq madam president we could enroll two point five million kids in after school programs for one year what else can i tell you about the funding we are shortchanging america's worker workers we can immediately replaced structurally deficient bridges in the united states and create more than three million good paying jobs for six and a half months of the cost in iraq don't you think our workers deserve it i do we could extend thirteen additional weeks of unemployment insurance to the chronically unemployed workers in high unemployment states one month in iraq we could help an additional one million families keep their heat on this winter through the lie he program one day in iraq madam president my colleagues come here and they have no end in sight for iraq open checkbook for iraq iraq in the morning iraq in the afternoon iraq at night iraq for twenty years fifty years maybe a hundred years senator mccain said we can't afford it anymore ok let's look at what else we could do for those people like myself who care about homeland defense for six weeks in iraq we can ensure full interoperability of all our communication systems man a president our firemen could talk to were policemen could talk to where sheriffs could talk to our hospitals could talk to our red cross six weeks in iraq we could provide first responders with three million communications devices for one month in iraq we could provide firefighters with twelve million breathing devices for one month in iraq and finally if you care about america's environment as i do and many of the people i represent do we could extend renewable energy production tax credits for four years we could do those tax cuts for investments in renewables for three weeks in iraq for less than three days we could ease this weekend a raise the superfund backlog and for less than one day we could triple the energy bill authorisation to train green collar workers mr president the american people have got to connect the dots here we can't take care of our own we can't take care of our kids we can't do what we have to do for our workers we can't do we have to do for our businesses we can't do we have to do for our environment and the reason is that our priority right now in this government because of this administration and their friends in congress is iraq in the morning iraq at ten o'clock in the morning iraq at noon iraq at five iraq at night and we ignore the needs of our people there is a time and a place to say to a country that is independent after all we have done anough is enough we trained four hundred forty thousand we put our american lives on the line our brave soldiers did everything asked of them and more they allowed three elections to be held they got saddam hussein they got saddam's family they found there were no weapons of mass destruction they did everything we asked them to do and the iraqi government takes time little steps baby steps forward while we continue having our soldiers die they get wounded and the taxpayers have an open checkbook and when my people come and say to me why can't we do more for our kids why can't we do more to protect our environment why can't we do more for our workers and our businesses why can't we do more to protect our people by investing in homeland security i am now telling them the truth well we don't know much about it scandals in contracting embassies that are larger than the u n complex some in iraq the iraqi people they say call palace i was in the downspout palace and i'll tell you something that was not a happy feeling because that is not something that we want to replicate huge buildings like that fancy how much of the cost eight hundred million dollars was supposed to cost five hundred million it doesn't matter if in iraq open the checkbook and write the checks say the president say the vice president say their friends in congress who are coming here and saying no no no every time we want to finally begin to bring this war to well i have to tell you mr president i'm ready for change my constituents are ready for a change and i'll tell you right now the feingold legislation is responsible because it says that we will keep troops there to protect our forces we will slowly start bringing them home we will redeploy them in have all the money we need to responsibly do that we will go after al qaeda i voted to go to war against the some of bin laden what happened to us some of the blood dead or alive oh no this is ministration turned around went into iraq and as you know result we are not safe al qaeda has reconstituted itself and we are shortchanging the american people thank you very much mr president i want opinion center consistency of position i disagree and i articulate why on that the president we've been arguing and debating on iraq for some period of time since the sense we have gone to war which we did on a bipartisan basis and aggressively decided that this is an important strategy to pursue together and we did that five years ago we have invested a lot of time and energy and life and blood limb from this country i was with a young man from wichita kansas yesterday who has a prosthesis bottom right of his foot he was pleased to serve in iraq he doesn't like it that he's lost his foot but he us to win and he wants us to see it on through and so here we are five years later a lot of investment particularly of people and lives and it would seem as if a fair number of people now in this body would say ok we've done it long enough let's quit let's pull on out and hope it all works out i don't think that's a responsible strategy if i'm hearing people that have served their rights they to see it through and they want to see us win and i want to get it done right and they want to see us be able to bring a democracy that they can stand on its own certainly not perfect but one that can stand on its own in that region of the world and it doesn't want to see us lose the investment that we have made today and we have made a heavy investment and i don't want to see it just walk away from it and say well ok we didn't get it quite the way we wanted to and i don't want to see us walk away in such a point that the  soldiers or the foreign fighters follow us back here and we see another nine eleven the bottom line is the safety and security of the young people that we've talked about so much we want to keep this place safe and secure and when the best ways to do that is to keep on o ice mr president over the last few years and particularly last year we debated a lot of iraqi resolutions and they have all failed except one one resolution is passed it's one i want to talk about it's the one that i did with joe biden the biden brownback resolution on devolving power and authority in iraq and we voted and voted and voted last year nothing passed but this one and because of what we were talking about is the model of devolving power and authority federalism system in iraq and i've met with iraqis sense that period of time a number of them the challenge in question ok is this really the right way to go we don't want to see the country broken up into three parts so we're not talking about breaking the country up in three parts we have fifty states where one country we're talking about three five states or regions they're one country but you devolve power and authority from the center so it's not just one group  shiite dominated central government that's dictating to kurdish sunni shiite country so let's devolve that power and authority out that passed that passed now what has happened since that has passed on the ground well we're seeing progress actually taking place political progress at the local and provincial levels is happening we saw recently the iraqi parliament passed a legislative package three bills together they did something that we do here often where you can't get one bill through you can't get two but three you can somehow get a coalition up together to pass it through that's what they did stablish in the two thousand and eight budget clarifying provincial powers and then offering amnesty for sunni political prisoners all three very important that middle one clarifying provincial powers i think is a key one i talked with one of the  respected scholars on this michael o'hanlon on the phone today he is one of the authors of the federalism approach in iraq we've got a military strategy that we're taking advantage of today that's providing political space and he's believed that we needed to devolve power and authority to the regions and you're seeing that now taking place legislatively by the central body in iraq clarifying provincial powers  with him and also my own thinking we'd regional recently and most talked about regions is saying well whether it's a region or province it's devolving power and authority and it's happening and it's a good thing to get that out of the centralized area what is loud and then to take place is more local governance it's allowing people whether they be sunni or kurd or shia area in a mixed area to be able to solve more of their own problem rather than being dependent upon the central government then they have a bit of an ideology or an edge that you don't agree with as happens around this country at times where people don't agree with what happens at the federal government but  decision a made be made at the state level that started to happen in iraq and it's diffusing in some of the pattern now we are far from solving this but the political space that's been granted by the military surge in the area is allowing this devolution of power and authority to happen so we now have clarify and provincial powers taking place the laws of the mansion are not perfect but they're giving this power and authority out to the regions we're now seeing political progress at the local and provincial levels and driving that is driving some of the politics at the national level none of that could happen without security at the national level in iraq without u s troops there and on the ground iraqi iraqis can gain stability by continuing to decentralize and move more power closer to individual rocky's eventual lections later this year i believe accelerate the importance of local politics in iraq and that's what we want to take place because what we were seeing coming together was shiite against sunni and the kurds that in in the north reference from time to time at other times just staying off to their own and saying look we're just going to sit up here and hope some day that we're going to be able to have a nation and let those two guys fight but now instead you're saying this going down to sunni councils and shia cancels and in some cases mixed neighborhoods you do continue to see  an ethnic move in neighborhoods particularly in baghdad and some going more sunni and others going more shiite some regions or some mixed ethnic or other religious communities that exist there some christian populations that are there but you're seeing it start to work because we continue to provide the security umbrella now let's take the security umbrella off let's let and that's have the feingold amendment passed and send a signal to iraqis we're moving out we're going to take care of our own areas you take care of your own own areas what do we think at this most probably most critical moment would happen if you pull that security piece out the u s security piece out i think you stop this move towards local and provincial you invite more arraigning financed problems into the hopes that the shiite can take over and then dominate and possess all of iraq's sunni areas and possibly kurdish areas as well although they're pretty well fortified amongst themselves you invite solder back in with his militia where he just recently took another and for another six months i'm asking my militias to stand down i think you invite very back into the picture at this key political moment for rack a bunch of forces that are going to hurt the long term future and so it seems like to me that this is a really bad idea at a particularly bad time for us to pull troops out of iraq now i had trouble with the surge at the outset i really question whether it was going to work the surge has worked and this is coming from somebody that was a cynic as to whether or not this was going to work in that region but that along with the sunni's decided ok we're going to build up our region here and these awakening councils that have taken place along with devolving this political power and authority in our better counterterrorism strategy it's working so why on earth would we why do we change something we've invested so much and now this start to produce the results that we want why on earth would we change that at this point in time that just doesn't seem to make much sense of why you would do that at this point in time i am a strong proponent of continuing to devolve this power and authority in iraq i think it's really the way forward for them is that way was the way forward for our country we had thr thirteen original colonies didn't necessarily agree with each other and said ok let's have one federal government but each of us are going to maintain our own power and authority in a number of regions and then over parity years we kind of work things out and over fifty years we've divided power and authority of state local federal government and this is going to take time for the iraqis but they need the political space that our military provides and did to pull out now or to send a signal even a polling out now  i think would be very harmful to the long term investment that we've made i think it would send a signal to the region that we're going to allow the iranian influence to spread and i think it also invites much more aggressive actions even towards us in pursuit of us here and other places around the world that peace is speculation we don't know what's going to happen in the future but it does seem like we're on a sort of track now that we can look to the future and with some bit of optimism whereas the other route of pulling out would certainly lead to a great deal of pessimism by the iraqis and towards me about what we're going to be doing provide in the long term security for the united states when we know terrorist objectives to attack and come after us and you're likely to see a devolution to a terrorist state or an iranian type of satellite state in iraq if we pull out precipitously either of which are  options that i think would be completely wrong for us to do as a nation and something i cannot support for those reasons i would urge my colleagues i certainly be voting against feingold amendment urge my colleagues to do that  would say let's let's stick with something to start to work it's not perfect let's stick with something on a political strategy that's starting to work it's not perfect but we have a model for it ourselves in the united states in our own history and it seems like this would be  particularly unwise time to move off of that one bit of resolution that we have agreed upon on political authority being devolved and a change of strategy on the military at this point in time thanks to presiding officer you know the floor mr president and i'm from south carolina thank you mr president i want to thank you in the all my democrat colleagues for allowing some time on the floor to discuss the progress in the war and allow us as republicans to contrast our position versus the position of retreating and announcing that we're giving up on iraq we've heard a lot of talk here today and apparently there's too high a price tag for freedom and certainly you can make an argument that it is expensive to be in iraq disses other wars have been expensive in deadly to our country of world war two the importance of that war could never be underestimated the price on it could not be estimated the fact that we need to fight wars in to show our strength as a nation has been proven time and time again and i'm worried that the senate is not united in the need to show strength against the war on terror last year this time in my democrat colleagues had said that this war in iraq was lost in place that lee the war against terrorists  that is the front lines today on the battle against terror is in iraq was announced here on the senate floor that the war was lost that we were in a hopeless civil war in iraq and since then we've had about forty votes different variations of votes to cut funding to withdraw to retreat sending a terrible signal to our troops and our enemies that we lack the resolve that was necessary to win this war whether we call it running or retreating or giving up or just saying america can't win all of those words and ideas emanated from the senate f from the majority side in the past year many even voted against the funds to surge the troops that have proven to be such a success over the last several months some of the funding is late as the end of last year was held hostage to gross earmarks that were unnecessary in a time of war and how can we talk about the war against terror of being so expensive when we held those funds hostage to other things that were certainly not a high priority i'm afraid my democrat colleagues at least many of them and i know this isn't true for all of them but too many clearly do not understand the threat of terrorism in our world today and what that means to our country in our freedom in too many have forgotten the importance of a strong military and how that results in peace around the world when nations respect the power of the united states of america but who could respect america any longer if after stating our resolve to stand iraq up as a free and stable democracy if in the middle of that challenge we decide to win with retreat and withdrawal the very fact that we've talked about it so many times has sent a signal of weakness that is empowered our enemies and likely put many more of our forces it risk and i hope this is the last time that we do it this year everyone has a right to not like the war to say it's too expensive but our responsibility here in the senate is much different than the average citizen and when we send a signal that we're not supporting the key mission of our military we do much to demoralize our troops in to strengthen the resolve of our enemies and again i hope this is the last time we'll do it democrat colleagues came have it both ways they continue to try to say they support the mission but everything that they actually do undermines pulls the rug right out from under what we're trying to do a lot of empty rhetoric but in the last week we've seen from the democrats on the house side a kidney essential part of the of our intelligence system is is  being threatened because we won't give the administration the approval to use our technology to intercept messages from terrorist who might be planning to attack us or our interests around the world i just returned from iraq a couple of weeks ago it's my third trip and i saw a marked difference from anything i had ever seen before the statistics have been talked about here on the floor of the senate the monthly attacks of decrease sixty percent since june of last year civilian deaths are down over seventy five percent in the last year al qaeda in iraq remains a threat but their power and ability to do damage have been greatly diminished i'd like to talk a little bit about the trip i joined senator ensign and senator tom coburn on this trip along with some staff that went with us and once we landed in baghdad we took a helicopter to a small community about thirty miles south of baghdad this was a community that was was controlled and terrorized by al qaeda up until about three months ago you wouldn't even go down main street in an armored vehicle we were told by our troops there yet we landed at american  outposts their soldiers who were living in that community a couple of blocks from the iraqi army outpost who were living in the community and we walked out of our outpost onto the main street and talk to the citizens who open their markets back talk to the iraqi soldiers and talk to the citizens who are helping to patrol the area of this this picture here is i'm talking with one of the local shakes levy who told us that al qaeda only a few months before had dragged his father in front of him and shot him and killed him next to him as an iraqi soldier who we've helped to train there is sharp as any soldier you would expect to see and this this community is well protected colonel farrel who is in charge of the outpost who took us down the main street was giving us a briefing and we were talking to the shaikh as as well as the iraqi soldiers about and they were proud to tell us what was happening there and the shakes and the  key working with the american surge to have freed much of iraq in the last six months these local leaders have turned against al qaida because al qaeda has done such damage in such brutality to their families and their communities they're now working with us in helping us to defeat al qaeda in that area there i just got another shot here of it is no difficult  see mr president but we were walking down a street that was empty except for bodies a few months ago and these little markets had opened back up and as we walk down the street and in this case of mostly american soldiers walking with us except for these groups these young men in the green jackets which they call in this community the sons of iraq and our military actually pays them to help patrol every day they have walkie talkies and when i asked the colonel when all these citizens came running out to us why were they not worried about them blowing themselves up and killing all of the soldiers and us who walking down the street in the colonel responded because we know everyone who's here and a lot of these folks from the markets came out and hugged our soldiers and out to al qaeda couldn't have felt better to see our soldiers so appreciated in that area and to see the local communities young men with walkie talkies their job is to patrol and to make sure that if any stranger comes to the community that they notify the iraqi army and the american army so that these people can be checked out but we saw a number of trucks with mattresses and furniture piled people moving back to this little community who had moved out months and years before because al qaeda had had run them out but we walked down several blocks probably eighty to one hundred markets it ha d reopened and the people were glad to see us they were cheerful they feel like they have their community back we we haven't won this war yet but we could see everywhere we go that iraq is standing up and taking back their country for themselves and our troops along with the rocky troops who we've helped to train and the sons of iraq are guarding and protecting their community want to talk about one marine here this is a major middleton who actually went to puerto high school in charleston he's a marine working in the training base where we're training iraqi soldiers and every three weeks we're producing twenty five hundred new iraqi soldiers who go straight from that camp to the battlefield and they're being trained with the same equipment and arms that they'll be using when they get there because this is where a lot of the equipment is being delivered he's proud of what he's doing everywhere we went our troops wanted to convince us that what we were doing was necessary it was right it was working and we could win it and it was important to them that we know and when i asked them what do they need that they don't have the answer i got more than any other answer was just don't forget  and some of the rhetoric on this floor has sent a signal to our troops that we're forgetting and don't appreciate what they are doing and this merengue away from his family just like all the other marines and soldiers and airman that we've we see there many of them away from their children and spouses for over a year we know what sacrifices they're making but i'm afraid marines are not respected in some parts of this cunt we saw it from  i'm afraid the democrats on the berkeley city council in california and some here may say that's an isolated situation but it's not because they're taking their signals from what they hear right here on the senate floor and they call our marine recruiters unwelcome intruders they call them thugs they call them bush murderers if you see the video on what they said about our marines while i am rains are sweating and bleeding and dying for us and our freedom what the berkeley city council did was not freedom of speech the protestors that had their freedom of speech for months but that wasn't good enough for them they wanted the power of government behind them to support their point of view at the expense of the marines and all americans who appreciate our marines and love what they do and we need to recognize that some of the things that have been said right here are signaling americans and people like the berkeley city council to show a disrespect for people like major middleton who's who's willing to put his life on the line for us and i've introduced a bill we call a simpler fi act named after the marine motto which means always faithful and it's just to rattle the cage is a little bit of the city council in berkeley to tell him ok if you want to take exception to our federal mission there in berkeley and certainly you don't deserve these secret earmarks that we've sent to berkeley in the last several months but the marines are always faithful and they always have been faithful to our country they're faithful to each other and we need to be faithful to them in all of those that are fighting for us in this discussion here on the floor which is again trying to have it both ways that we support our troops we we don't when we don't support the very mission we've asked them to give their lives for we can't have it both ways and we can't keep having this discussion that questions before the whole world the mission that we've asked our soldiers and marines an airman coast guard and all our men and women in uniform in the civilian support staff that we have in iraq and afghanistan and throughout the world that are fighting this war on terror we're going to win this war on terror of the cost of the resolve that we have to be free and peaceful as a nation and i hope that we'll get that message here that our troops have in iraq and afghanistan and around the world that sometimes you have to fight for the freedom that we have here in this country and now is the time that we have to find in the fact that we've shown resolve in the last year has resulted in clear successes in iraq that are under not an undeniable that we know we can win this battle but this battle in going to be the last one the terrorists are going to be here for a generation or more and if they're not in iraq they're going to be in pakistan or they're going to be in afghanistan they're going to be somewhere if they're not here doing their deeds their terrorist steeds against the peaceful people of the world we have got to show resolve and our enemies must know that we will never stop in to root them out and do away with them i'd like to make one last comment because the folks in south carolina in many ways are very involved with the effort in iraq and in fact the the airman and women at the charleston air force base line c seventeen's carry more of the cargo and supplies and arms into iraq than any other base in our country this is one of the teams in the c seventeen that flew us out of afghanistan back to kuwait on our way home but we actually had three teams out of charleston that moved us from kuwait to baghdad and baghdad back to the intermediary stop but they're proud of what they do they're doing and they wanted us to know and me to tell you that they believe this mission is important and that we can win it and all they need is our support not our empty rhetoric but our real support and our belief in them and what they're doing i came back with that belief in that resolve that what we're doing is right and if we continue what we're doing we will win and we will continue to set the terrorists back on their heels and keep our country safe so i think the men and women in charleston air force base who are making all americans proud as they serve all over the world on their mission and with that mr president i yield back senator from new jersey i thank you mr president i ask what time remains for the our side of the aisle in one half minutes on the democratic side fifteen and a half minutes yeah mr mr president i rise to talk about iraq and senator feingold's bill which does what most is legislation to start bringing our troops home from iraq but as i stand here on this floor mr president and i listened to one of our colleagues say that a and community out west they have said something disrespectful and offensive about our troops large it here on this floor is a gross insult to all of us who are part of this body i outrageous to say that they've learned that kind of to no one here disrespects our troops no one here wants anything but the best for them best for them whether it's taking care of their needs for food and shelter are there or  begin my remarks with president bush is now in the infamous declaration almost five years ago when he announced mission  accomplished we sadly remember that day when the president landed on the u s s lincoln aircraft carrier like a conquering hero standing before a huge banner which we see here for trade and we remember watching as president bush declared that day to be the end it turned out to be a stunningly casual statement not unlike another remark the president made when he said talking about the enemy bring em on president i served in your during world war two and i never heard a commander invite more of the enemy to come to fight that was when missed when the president stood there that day the insinuation was that it was the end of major combat operations the end of america's casualties the end of america's role as a major player in iraq's future many of us remember hearing that it was not the end and today as we look at the terrible costs to our troops their families to our priorities here at home to the war against the terrorists who attacked us and to america's standing we realized that day in two thousand and three was only a beginning when the president stood on the desk of that carrier america had lost one hundred and thirty nine of our troops in iraq but as we stand here today we have lost almost four thousand to be exact three thousand nine hundred sixty eight americans have died in iraq one hundred and two of those troops had ties to my state of new jersey ninety five percent of the mothers the fathers the sons and the daughters that we have lost were killed in action after president bush said mission accomplished mr president that mission was not accomplished president bush's war has left children growing up without parents and parents to grow old with no children his war has caused nearly twenty nine thousand troops to leave the combat theater with their wont nearly seven hundred of them lost limbs and many more have le loans and invisible but in their minds our troops are returning home from the iraqi desert with traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder making it so difficult for them to return to their families to their jobs and their lives stead of spending three million three billion dollars each week to wage war on education or childhood disease in america the president is spending three billion dollars a week to wage war in iraq amazingly i found someone who doesn't know that said the president's own director of the office of management and budget mr nussle recently i asked him how much we were spending each week in iraq and the budget hearing and director nussle said he didn't know everybody in america beside him almost knows very well three billion dollars each and every week plus supplemental expenditures that are in the hundreds of billions found acceptable is an insult to the american people who are funding this war and an insult to our troops are still fighting there and now the president will claim that we're making military progress in iraq and that the surge is working  let's tell the american people the truth america lost nine hundred and one mothers and fathers sisters and brothers in the year two thousand and seven along two thousand and seven was the deadliest year for america since the start of the iraq war more than three thousand three hundred members of new jersey's army reserves and national guard are scheduled to  to iraq this year just a couple of weeks ago i went to fort dix a major base military base in new jersey and i talked to people who had already served there eighteen months and they were weary they were willing to do their duty they respected their obligation but their families who are unhappy the people i saw the spouses the children were not happy about that he going away again some of them are going to get hurt and some other may never come home and as they did their do do their duty with honor and bravery they count on us to do ours their deployment is a reminder that the president's surge is fundamentally flawed his solution is built on military strength when a political and diplomatic solution is what's needed in iraq iraq not america needs to accomplish these goals and we want them to do it and we want them to make it possible for us to start bringing our troops home as soon as possible they have to do it it's their responsibility it's their country and we want to end our presence there the surge is also a distraction from the war that president bush started in response to nine eleven but never finished that was the war on terror when the president spoke to our country after september eleventh he said something and i quote here he said i will never forget this well and to our country or those who inflicted it but it appears that he has forgotten he's forgotten about osama bin laden the man who went and played did those terrible  on the victims their families and this country he's forgotten that the war against al qaida and the hunt for osama bin laden began and continues outside of iraq and because we've lost our focus afghanistan is now spending back towards violence and chaos and after the u s led invasion of two thousand and one the taliban was down and wounded but now it seems that the taliban is growing stronger and over the past two years southern afghanistan has seen the worst violence since the taliban was dismantled and last year was the deadliest year for u s troops in afghanistan since two thousand and one today al qaeda has also found sanctuary in remote areas in pakistan and the afghani pakistani border is so porous that terrorists blow through it like when and if all of this wasn't bad enough just look at what pressure the president's war is done to america's standing and prestige in the world there used to be a time when people saw america as the mara leader and americans were proud of this country standing in the world in world war two for example we had strained because most of the free world was with us now is not one of those times now much of the world is against us more than seventy percent of the rockies disapprove of american presence in their country and sixty seven percent of citizens across the globe believe that american forces should leave iraq within a year countries who are our allies when we first invaded iraq like italy  spain denmark they've left us in the desert and great britain one of america's great his start to startle allies sent its troops from iraq into afghanistan president bush why are we not so wise today the president has spent more than five hundred and twenty six billion dollars on the war in iraq more than a half a trillion dollars on a war that continues to take american you empower our rivals turn our friends against us and let our enemies remain on the loose if that cost was not on believable enough the president had the audacity to ask the american people to spend even more and he has a pending request of one hundred and five billion dollars for the rest of two thousand and eight and defense secretary robert gates has estimated that iraq will cost another one hundred and seventy billion dollars for two thousand and nine every dime that we spend on iraq is a dime that we cannot spend on our  on homeland security for our city's police department streets education for our children and health care for our families that the president has requested just now a cut of eight hundred million dollars from a critical homeland security grant program leaving americans more exposed to dangers at home it's time for us to realize it's never going to be enough money former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld rumsfeld used to say that we would stand down when they're acting the iraqis stood up no one says a name or so let me stand up and make it clear it is time for the troops to start coming home they've earned the right to get back to their loved ones their kids their spouses and their country and i hope that we'll see that day in the not safe redeployment of our troops from iraq and i'm very grateful to the majority leader for allowing this debate and for co sponsoring this legislation he is a strong opponent of the war and he understands how it is distracting us from our top national security priority defeating the global threat presented by al qaeda and its affiliates and while the debate on iraq is refreshing the republicans still want to allow us to actually vote on the bill in fact the list of the other side during this debate it was  apparent that they believe leaving large numbers of u s troops in iraq indefinitely for an open ended military mission is somehow in our country's interest of the american people must be scratching their heads and thinking what is what is it going to take to get those folks in washington to listen to us i can assure them and i can assure my colleagues that we will have more debate and votes on iraq members will have still more opportunities to listen to their constituents and to listen to the warnings about the global threat from al qaeda and the intolerable strain on our military and they will again have to decide whether to keep ignoring those warnings and give the president the green light to continue a war without end in iraq and a few minutes of senate will vote in relation to another feingold reid bill as twenty six thirty four addressing al qaeda before i discuss that bill and like to respond to some of the criticisms that have been leveled against the feingold redirect redeployment bill i'm glad so my colleagues apparently taken the time to read the iraq bill but i wish some of them would read a little more carefully or thought a little harder before voicing some of their concerns of course some of the criticisms come from member i have little or no interest in stopping or slowing down the war but i've even heard from a few a few complaints from members on our side of the war in fact some democrats seem to be trying a lot harder to come up with arguments against this bill and against congress acting then they're trying to do trying to end the war one or two senior democrats are actually lobbying hard behind the scenes against the feingold bill that is disappointing to say the least and it shows us all what we continue to be up against as we try to bring this war to a close by pointing out that the final reid bill does not mr president does not restrict the government's ability to go after al qaeda and its affiliates around the globe in fact one of the main purposes of the bill is to ensure that we have the full capability to do just that when it comes to our troops in iraq however we can't allow this president to use the narrow exceptions in this bill to continue his misguided polic language in the bill has been crafted to try to ensure that the administration does not and cannot continue to maintain a heavy military footprint in iraq specifically the first exception in the final read bill allows funding to continue security but it does not allow the president to continue the open ended mission because it's not in our national security interest to leave our troops on the front lines in the middle of an iraqi civil war limited  prohibits operations without a clearly defined counterterrorism objective such as the current open ended mission and of course this provision like the rest of the bill only applies to iraq does not affect any other u s operations around the world but my colleagues are particularly troubled by this in scope language i'm molting open to discussing with them any reasonable modifications that don't open new loopholes and this is no reason mr president to just completely block the senate from even considering the bill my colleagues are free to try to amend it if they will only let us take it up now colleagues think we should have u s troops conducting operations in iraq against other organizations that aren't affiliated with a q then we do in fact have a difference of opinion we need to be clear about our priorities our top national security priority is the threat posed by al qaeda and its affiliates putting our brave men and women in a uniform in uniform against groups or entities in iraq that don't pos a direct threat to the united states is a misuse of our resources and it's exactly that mistake i'm trying to fix with this legislation obviously at all times u s troops in iraq will be able to defend themselves against any perceived threat regardless of who it comes from when we're talking about planning and conducting operations those operations would need to be targeted against members of al qaeda or affiliates we can't figure out who are launching operations against and if we can't figure out how to distinguish between al qaeda in iraq and the many other unsavory actors in iraq that are not directly threaten our interests then we really have a serious intelligence problem which underscores the degree to which this war is distracting us from our top priority cycle rebuild also allow u s troops to remain in iraq to quote provide security for personnel and infrastructure of the united states government unquote a question has been raised about whether troops could also provide security for u s coalition forces under this provision of course the vast majority of foreign troops in iraq are u s troops were the ones holding the bag there and that's a direct result of this administration's decision to rush to war without building a strong sustainable coalition and so raising concerns about non iraqi coalition forces is largely a red herring however i respect the contribution of those coalition troops and i'd be open again to discussing ways in which we can ensure they are protected without opening up a big loophole to keep a lot of more us troops there again technical concerns like this are no reason to block us from even considering the bill frankly mr president it sounds like an excuse not to deal with the real issue which is our need to get out of this situation the final read bill also permits us troops to be stationed in iraq to provide quote training to members of the iraqi security forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or  in tax upon us armed forces unquote now this does not require any kind of guarantee that i s f troops receiving training haven't been involved in sectarian violence or attacks upon us as some have suggested it just requires some good faith effort to make sure we are to assisting some of the very people responsible for destabilizing iraq and killing americans that seems pretty reasonable doesn't it just kind of good faith effort to make sure we're not helping people that have already killed americans one would think that was reasonable there should not be controversial we have a policy as a government of not supporting militaries around the world that commit and discipline acts of violence and this administration a stent simply vets foreign militaries thoroughly under what is known as the leahy law i don't see why we should make an exception for iraq particularly when the g a o and general jones issued a report showing that the i assess are compromise by militias if we continue to arm and train the i s f we may be simply contributing to ongoing instability in iraq at a minimum that we need to be careful to ensure we aren't giving some of the worst actors in iraq the tools to perpetuate further violence and bloodshed by the way mr president we've already trained over four hundred thirty nine thousand i s f personnel this certainly raises questions about how much more training they need we need to make sure that the president cannot keep tens of thousands of troops in iraq policing the civil war under the guise of training indeed the training u s military personnel in iraq are providing is not what is traditionally thought of as training such as boot camp our training is all field training and there's no doubt line between training and joint operations now some folks here think that's just fine they want u s troops to continue being embedded with iraqi troops conducting joint operations and the organizations but mr president u s troops could not be embedded with iraqi security forces for training purposes and the u s may continue to equip bias but may not deploy u s troops to iraq soley for this purpose now some on our side want u s troops to continue providing logistical support to iraq recchi forces indefinitely this again is a backdoor way to keep substantial numbers of u s troops on the front lines performing basic combat support functions like providing air support even seemingly run of the mill logistical operations can be extremely dangerous in a chaotic environment in iraq that is not in our national security interest and it's not something we should should permit we need a full redeployment not a half hearted half measure i hope my colleagues will rethink their opposition to the feingold reid bill they really do have these kinds of concerns about it particularly some of the more technical concerns i've addressed well let let's just actually allow the bill that come to the floor let's have a mammoth and votes that's our responsibility as legislators and we owe it to our constituents and our men and women in uniform to have this debate in the open and on the record mr president while we may be done debating iraq for now the senate has another opportunity to support a bill that would help get our national security strategy straight that bill is s twenty six thirty four which i also introduce a leader reid along with senators outlining a comprehensive global strategy to defeat al qaeda and its affiliates one that ensures we are bringing all of our assets to the table military diplomatic intelligence and other the strategy must ensure that u s resources and assets are targeted appropriately to meet the regional and country specific threats that we face and the troop deployments do not overstretch our military mr president this seems pretty straightforward don't we want to make sure that we are correctly prioritizing the geographic threats posed by al qaeda and its affiliates around the world and don't we need to make sure that all of our assets including military intelligence and diplomatic ones are properly focused on addressing those threats and should we make sure that we aren't imposing an impossible burden on our military in the process it appears however that the administration is afraid of what such a strategy would say namely that while it is focusing its attention and resources and on iraq  threat posed by al qaeda and its affiliates in pakistan and many places around the world is growing the d n i the director of national intelligence warned this month that al qaeda has retained or regenerated key elements of its capability including its top leadership operational lieutenants and a de facto say a haven in the pakistani border area with afghanistan unquote and yes the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mike mullen testified recently that quote the most likely near term attack on the united states will come from al qaeda safe havens in pakistan and a recent report led by former nato commander general james jones called afghanistan a quote strategic stalemate unquote and warned that quote afghanistan remains a failing state it could become a failed state unquote  while our military and intelligence experts are saying this president's policies have stretched our military to the breaking point just yesterday the senate heard testimony from top army officials that the army is under serious strain and must reduce the length of combat tours as soon as possible listen to what general george casey chief of staff of the army had to say quote the cumulative effects of the last six plus years at war and left our army out of balance consumed by the current fight and able an able to do the things we know we need to do to properly sustain our all volunteer force and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future these are the words of general george casey out of balance and able to do the things we need to do madam president we need to  these dire warnings and recognize that the president's iraq policies are unsustainable the final read bill twenty six thirty four would force the administration to confront that reality and to confront the dangerous threat posed  troops are bogged down in iraq unfortunately the administration headed has its head stuck in the sand of iraq and actually threatened yesterday to veto this commonsense bill i guess the president doesn't want the american people to know just how off track we really are well believe me they actually know they've been watching over the past few years as this administration has confused the war in iraq with the fight against al qaeda they want to change and they don't want to wait another year for another president and another congress to finally act on their concern so i hope my colleagues listen to them and listen to our intelligence experts when they warn us about the serious threat posed by in pakistan afghanistan and elsewhere if they do this bill will pass one hundred to nothing and the american people will breathe a sigh of relief that finally their voices are being here heard and president yield the floor suggest the absence of of further proceedings on the quorum call be dispensed with without objection and a few minutes we'll have a procedural vote on another proposal by the junior senator from wisconsin a bill that would direct the administration to produce and sixty days a new global strategy for defeating al qaida but first a word about the first feingold bill which dictates withdrawal last year's bold decision to launch a counterinsurgency plan under general petraeus has renewed our hopes for a unified iraq that can govern defend and sustain itself as an ally in the war on terror our men and women in uniform have protected the iraqi people scattered al qaeda militias and helped create an environment that has led to progress not only at the tactical level but in government and in reconciliation as well and we owe them all a great debt in september general petraeus out to outline his plan for bringing these men and women back after a job well done and for trench positioning our mission to one of partnership and overwatch and i just say madam president parent that  i just was with general petraeus is why few moments ago who was at a reception here in the capitol complex for people from the fort campbell area earlier and general  career he was the commander of the one hundred first division the storied screaming eagles who have been at the tip of the spear in both afghanistan and iraq over the last four years general petraeus has had three different assignments in iraq we're all thoroughly familiar with his current assignment but his wife is a good soldier indeed as well and had an opportunity few minutes moments ago to thank her again not only for his contribution but for her sacrifice as well this reduction in forces that general petraeus mission has made possible has already begun and the iraqi people are preparing for prevention  october due to the success of the petraeus plan sony is now serving a sons of iraq and defending their own nation will now have a real stake in those elections when general petraeus and ambassador crocker return this april we should listen to their recommendations to ensure that the hard earned gains of the surge are maintained but one thing is already clear from the successes we've recently seen congress needs to stop considering this war in fits and starts and through piecemeal h we need to understand that our interests in the persian gulf and iraq are longstanding and will not vanish just because we have a presidential election in november we can't wish the dangers away and this leads me to the second feingold measure calling for a new strategy in defeating al qaida and we deal with global strategies and long range plans for the national security strategy the national military strategy the quadrennial defense review and through the annual defense legislation if the senator from wisconsin wanted to know how our global strategy to combat al qaida fits into the context of these reports and reviews he might have asked the administration to produce such a document in the annual defense authorization act also i might suggest that one sure way of strengthening our fight against al qaida and other terrorists would be for the democratic leadership over in the house of representatives to stop blocking a vote on the bipartisan senate passed by as a bill we know there's a bipartisan majority in the house of representatives to pass the same bill that passed the senate by pass a bill that does so but we welcome debate on the al qaida report because we're ready to provide all of the resources required to defeat al qaida to include quick passage of the defense appropriations supplemental full funding of the two thousand and nine defense appropriations act and passage of a pfizer bill that will allow our intelligence community to continue to hunt terrorists we must also consider the full cost of our nation's global commitment and our need to modernize our ground air and naval forces we should also give the administration as apple time to complete the study which is service sound guidance for the incoming administration so we welcome a debate on how to best  and defend the nation and if we are to get on this bill will be debating amendments that make this report more meaningful  president the majority leader some parts of the iraq war are open for debate but there's a lot we know for sure these are the facts nearly four thousand american soldiers have been killed thirty thousand wounded and men in prison to the ones a third of them are very serious we have thousands and thousands of more than three thousand double amputees blindness hearing loss head trauma that will affect them the rest of their lives i talked this morning  president about returning iraqi soldier who has post traumatic stress disorder can't work losing his home these are the facts we still have one hundred fifty thousand or more troops in iraq news from the pentagon is that there's eight thousand more troops now than before the surge started and there will be in july i should say general powell colin powell told us last year the army is about broken well general casey chief of staff the army confirmed what's general powell said yesterday he said and i quote the demand for our forces really a good report dealt with admiral tim keating commander of pacific command a huge huge command he has and basically the whole report was how hamstrung he is in trying to do his job you can't do it anymore because as indicated in the report there's not enough resources anymore because they're all being shipped to iraq and now some to afghanistan those are the facts madam president i had visiting me today some people there were so excited don snyder who's been president the bank in las vegas is now the chairman the board of trustees of the organization that is building a performing arts center in las vegas one foundation gave as a start one hundred fifty million dollars to the organization they have raised now four hundred twenty million dollars they need fifty million dollars more for this organization and i said to them four hundred twenty million dollars that's how much money we spend in iraq and one day one day that's what it is beautiful for me our center in las no holidays new year's christmas easter doesn't matter we all work right through another four hundred million dollars of taxpayers money that's borrow and the numbers going up not down should understand that america has done its share i personally dispute the wisdom of going into iraq i said and i've said many times the worst foreign policy blunder in history this country is invasion of iraq but were there when is enough going to be enough how many more days pending four hundred million dollars are we going to need in iraq when is enough enough four thousand soldiers enough killed thirty thousand wounded how many blind soldiers do we need now madam president no one disputes the hurly efforts of our troops is a helicopter pilot he served a tour of duty in afghanistan and he sent me e mails about what he was doing over there and he came all eyes had dinner with me in  thinks maybe i'll be disappointed in him and disappointed he's a he's a design soldier how much more do we need to do when is enough enough five years of war i guess according to republics is long we're going to start in a few days the sixth year of this war when is enough enough back here madam president number of years ago it's been five years ago now i met the iraqi governing council and i can remember that meeting as it were yesterday were in senator frist office the head of that delegation from iraq said i know people think that we have the second largest supply of oil in the world but that's wrong we have the largest supply of oil we have more oil than saudi arabia iraq is a wealthy nation when is enough american blood and treasure for iraq can't this wealthy nation take care of itself and the matter we're going to be voting on in just a few minutes is not very complicated matter present states combat david al qaeda and its affiliates pretty simple and direct that's what we're voting on that's what we're voting on that's what the legislation is all about why would anybody be opposed to this straightforward legislation now it's clear that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not serious about any of this arac legislation they i had not to need to talk on it and i was i said earlier today it's been a good debate they believe there still is not enough of american blood and treasure in irak i do the american people do twenty five percent of the republicans believe we should be coming home from iraq this isn't some democratic idea it's an idea the american people on this matter know we're going to vote on a few minutes how can the object of this how can they not vote overwhelmingly for this if they had an honest reason to disagree with a report on the fight against terrorism that be one thing that's not what's going on here this is the stall that's been going on so that we will not have the opportunity to start the debate on a stimulus package dealing with housing course we brought these matters up and if they were allowing us to go forward with these pieces of legislation dealing with iraq and having amendments like of course what happened but no says at the end of every one of his telecast this is the one thousand seven hundred sixty fourth day since president bush declared mission accomplished board that aircraft carrier we all know the mission has not been accomplished we all know that we're not safer today than we were when he began his misguided war five years ago it's time to turn the page and begin to rebuild our moral authority in the world to address the growing challenges we face throughout the world d i've been happy to co sponsor this measure i believe as many of us do that the decision to invade iraq was in fact the worst foreign policy decision of our time maybe beyond that we will pay a heavy price for but we will not pay a price as a nation as great as the price paid by the families who've lost their son or daughter or husband or wife that they dearly loved in combat those men and women are true heroes the majority of time is expired remaining time is under the control of minorit how you back the remaining time on the show time is yielded back under the previous order the motion to proceed to add twenty six thirty three is withdrawn and under the previous order the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture we undersigned senators and accordance with provisions of rule twenty two of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to counter number five seventy six as twenty six thirty four the global strategy report by my seventeen senators by unanimous is consent the mandatory quorum call is waive the question is is it the sense of the senate that the debate on the motion to proceed to add twenty six thirty four a bill to require report setting forth the global strategy of the united states to combat and defeat al qaeda and its affiliates mr stevens  now i mr sessions i this is such a sin i mr no way i brasco no mr martinez i is there any member wishing to vote is there any member wishing to change his or her vote if not on this vote the yeas are eighty nine the nays are three three fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn having vote in the affirmative the motion is agreed to the senator from colorado madam president i was scheduled to speak at six thirty we had a vote at six thirty it's my understanding that now i have the florida speak on because the bill we just voted on listeners unrecognised man president i rise today to discuss the war in iraq and specifically the legislation at hand which directs the president to transition the mission of u s forces in iraq the senate has voted on this same issue on four separate occasions in this session alone not one of these those times did the measure receive even one third of the senate support nonetheless here we are again debating the senate will be in order senator from colorado thank you ma'am madam chairman it is our responsibility as members of this body to discuss thoroughly what is arguably the most important defining issue of our day in fact i find it highly curious that there was an attempt to canst against those who voted for this debate and who want the full thirty hours to talk about this vital issue some in this body seem to have perhaps been a little too clever and tried to someone as much outrage against debating this matter is they were prepared to use in support of debating i do question exactly what those in support of this bill hope to realistically accomplish with this debate and this legislation before us given the gains that have been made through the surge strategy last may when the surge was being implemented only twenty nine senators voted for similar legislation and out of the much has changed for the better since that point violence in iraq is down sixty percent since the start of the surge and eighty percent in and around iraq there's been a thirty percent increase since june and insurgent weapons  caches discovered economic improvements continue or oil production is constantly increasing fifty percent from this time last year and it well revenues are nearly double what they were last year in baghdad alone twenty moon twenty one new health clinics opened this year one thousand eight hundred eighty five new schools have been built and another one thousand six hundred four have been refurbished throughout iraq because of reconstruction and rebuilding electricity demand is up twenty five percent a year ago it would have been laughable to suggest that and bar providence be transferred to iraqi control but that will happen in may when this occurs and bar will be the tenth out of eighteen provinces provinces under full iraqi control the sending the city of ramadi in anbar was once one of the most dangerous cities in  for just over a year is scheduled to leave the area in march and is not scheduled to be replaced the u s is on pace to transfer control of all iraqi provinces by the end of the year the surge strategy is brilliant in its simplicity exert our military forces to quell insurgent violence in order to create an environment suitable for fostering and sustaining a legitimate government capable of growing its citizens real police tical progress on only be reached when iraqis feel secure and the results of the surge are proving this to be exactly the case this far the surge is producing its intended results by eliminating terrorists interrupting communications between insurgents in many areas in iraq and ensuring safety for the people which in turn allows for greater cooperation and association with the united states only with these security  have a reasonable chance of finding a political solution the strategy is convincing many iraqis to abandon terrorist methods and turn against groups such as al qaeda our efforts are reuniting torn communities and neighboring political processes obvious obviously this nation would have been better served had the surge strategy been implemented earlier but the ability to criticize strategy isn't the same as ability to strategize and so i applaud those who did finally implement the surge strategy to congratulate them on their vision as we know iraq must stand up before we can stand down general david petraeus has state that there cannot be soley a military solution to violence without political action and he's absolutely correct in his assertion in recent weeks or rockies have made tremendous political strides under what are still difficult and onerous conditions and as a result of increased security in their nation feb thirteenth saw the council of representatives passed three key pieces of legislation amnesty pursue my security detainees a provincial powers law and a budget the bass of occasion reform was an act of last month as well as talk about those political accomplishments the general amnesty law passed by the shiite majority parliament set the guidelines provide and the city for thousands of detainees held interactive attention facilities this helps to remove one of the greatest stumbling blocks to reconciliation between sunni and shi the iraqi parliament has passed that prevention powers law which outlines a balance of authorities between the central and local governments while also specifying that provenge elections be held in october one of this year the iraqi parliament approved a forty eight billion dollars budget representing a step towards iraq to use its own resources to provide for security and infrastructure reconstruction