it's hardly a family in america that hasn't had an experience with tobacco and cancer my family is no exception when i was fourteen years old my fifty three year old father died of lung cancer he smoked two packs of camels a day he was hopelessly addicted to tobacco and we lost him at what i now view is a very early age i can recall as a student in high school in his hospital room when he drew his last labored breath in the sadness that fell over me on november the thirteenth one nine hundred fifty nine i didn't walk out of that hospital room vowing that i would get even with tobacco companies but i never escape that memory of that family experience many other families have a similar story to tell the day came many years later when i had an opportunity as a new member of the u s house of representatives to do something there's another story  to that experience it involves the customary race of members of congress for airplanes respawn spent most of our life racing through airports in this particular instance i was in phoenix arizona trying to fly to chicago long before there were transportation security agencies and people taking off their shoes and x ray machines and i got to the airport twenty minutes before the plane was about to take off race to the counter united airlines counter and a young woman was there and i gave her my ticket she said i'll get you a boarding pass but you're going to have to run to the gate so she gave me a boarding pass this was twenty years ago and she handed it to me and i looked and it was a middle seat in the smoking section of the airplane and i knew this was a long flight and so i said i know i've got to get down to the gate but can't you give me a different seat in the nonsmoking section and she said no it's the last seat and she said there's nothing i can do about it and then she looked down at my ticket and my title and she said but congressman there's something you can do about it got on the airplane sat between two i now characterize them as chain smoking sumo wrestlers and spent several hours in misery breathing in their secondhand smoke i looked around the airplane and i thought to myself what about that elderly lady who's just up there in the smoking section that's two rows away what about that woman with a little baby this can't be healthy and so i came back to washington and said to my staff i want to introduce a bill banning smoking on airplanes there was silence in the room and then they said you're crazy nobody beats the tobacco lobby and the entire leadership of the house of representatives democrats and republicans don't want any tobacco amendments for a lot of political reasons welt naive and undaunted i went forward with this quest to ban smoking  airplanes i had a lot of help along the way congressman bill young of florida who still serves had been one of the early pioneers in dealing with tobacco and smoking and he courageously stepped forward and said i'll make it a bipartisan amendment but we don't have a chance we were both on the appropriations committee and i managed to at least create an opportunity for a vote on the floor of the house i reached the floor of the house because of another great congressman now deceased claude pepper claude pepper served in this chamber as a senator was defeated and won over and served in the house of representatives and club pepper was chairman of the rules committee and came to my rescue when i was about to lose in the rules committee and never appreciated why he did that why he gave me a chance to get a vote on this issue on the floor until later when somebody told me that as a senator in the one nine hundred thirty s cloud pepper of florida had pushed for the creation of the national cancer institute he didn't talk much about tobacco being a southerner but it meant a lot to him personally and he more anyone gave me my chance to bring this amendment to the floor so on july thirteenth one thousand nine hundred eighty seven twenty years ago today i got my chance to offer the amendment to ban smoking on flights of two hours or less in the galleries of the house of representatives were seated uniformed flight attendants from the major airlines they were on my side they were sick and tired breathing in all the smoke on the airplanes and we came to the floor expecting to lose i didn't realize at the time that the house of representatives and you can add the senate into the equation was the largest frequent flyer club in america we spent more time on airplanes and most people and as the a was debated congressman started coming forward to speak on behalf of the amendment some of the most liberal some of the most conservative republicans democrats all over the country and i could feel the momentum building  went on for a long period of time and the vote was finally taken the vote was one hundred ninety eight to one hundred ninety three my amendment passed after it passed i called over to the senate and contacted the man who was chairman of the senate appropriations committee on transportation his name frank lautenberg of new jersey and i said to frank lautenberg would you consider offering the same a senate and he said he would and he did successfully mr president that amendment really changed america i did note at the time and i don't want to take more credit than is due but at the end of that debate when we started banning smoking on airplanes people started asking obvious questions if secondhand smoke is dangerous on an airplane why isn't that dangerous on a train on a bus in a hospital in a school at a head start center in an office building and we know what's happened twenty years later it has now become customary for people not to smoke and unusual to see anyone smoking in an enclosed space that isn't their own home that is a dramatic change i think it's a change for the better i think as a result of that law which was a challenge to me that america is a healthier place and i think our attitude toward tobacco is smoking is much different today than it was last year in my home state of illinois a record breaking thirty six cities and counties and acted smoke free laws more than any other state in the nation i'm very proud of that this was a milestone for another reason we learned the mighty tobacco lobby is not invincible we proved it on the floor of the house in the senate twenty years ago we're proving it now and city councils and state legislatures across america this was one of the first times the tobacco industry had ever lost an important role call vote on the floor of the house it showed the congress could stand up against spesh will interest groups the wealthy and the powerful those that were financing campaigns and instead vote for the health of all americans twenty years later smoking is banned on almost all commercial flights worldwide i had a funny experience a few years after we passed our law my wife and i were flying to portugal through london we changed planes in london to airport chicle british travellers got on the plane and i was shocked to find they had a small smoking section on airplanes i couldn't believe it and it turned out it was a sign that was put on a seat that said smoking allowed behind the sign and a group of british tourists got on and saw this sign and couldn't believe it and said to the flight attendant what's this all about and she said well if you want to be a nonsmoking section you sit on this side the sign smoking sections on the other side of the sign and one of the lady says this will never do and grabs the sign and goes to the last seat in the plane puts it on that my wife turned to me and said look what you got started i don't want to take credit for getting it started but i am kind of proud of being part of  it i want to congratulate a number of pioneers in this area air canada was way ahead of us on this issue northwest airlines was one of the first in the nation to move toward smoke free flights they deserve special recognition even before this federal law was passed we need to remind ourselves from time to time about tobacco and cancer and heart disease i think we've been lulled into the feeling that this problem is under control tobacco related disease is the number one preventable cause of death in america today still is it still an issue there are still too many children who take up smoking i mean literally children tobacco companies know that the way to ensnare someone into this tobacco addiction is to get them started as kids kids rebellious and curious turned to tobacco developing an addiction they don't even understand finding it hard to quit they become early smokers lifelong smokers and chances are one in three they'll die because of that habit this is still an issue it's an issue we're going to face soon here on the floor the senate because the finance committee  considering increasing the tobacco tax in america i'm sure there will be screams that that's unfair to smokers but i've reached the point now where i have to tell them that there is a great expense associated with their addiction and we also know that increased cost of product reduces the likelihood that kids will use tobacco products and so there's a positive that will come out of it we know that when it comes to cancer and heart disease diseases that affect virtually every organ in the human body and most importantly impact the life of virtually every family tobacco is a negative factor in two thousand and six the surgeon surgeon general's reports titled the health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke reaffirm previous findings secondhand smoke causes heart disease cancer respiratory problems and even death what was once considered impossible is now industry practice what was once unknown is now conventional wisdom it's time for us to take the next big step next week my colleagues as members of the health committee led by my friend senator ted kennedy will debate giving the food and drug administration the authority to regulate tobacco most americans don't know that tobacco has a curious place in the law it is not considered a food or a drug if it were a food or a drug it would be right related those who make the product would have to disclose its contents and would have to put meaningful warning labels on the product tobacco has been has had carved out for  niche in the law so that that requirement doesn't apply nearly every other industry in america that puts public health at risk is regulated by some federal agency but not tobacco if we're going to continue t fight against big tobacco and the death and disease which this product creates if we're going to secure the ability of all americans to breathe air that is free from secondhand smoke if we are to affirm the right of all of us to lead a healthy and productive lives we have to take this next step and allow the food and drug administration to regulate this product we must allow the f d a to regulate an industry that continues to cost us the lives of more than forty three thousand americans and over one hundred billion dollars in health care costs and lost productivity every single year today there won't be any cakes or parties but we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of a vote in the house of representatives which has been an important part of my legislative career this vote to ban smoking on airplanes twenty years ago played an important role in launching the smoke free movement in america i urge my colleagues to move us closer to finishing the work that we started we stood up to the tobacco industry then mr president and we can do it again now the president i now ask for consent that the statement which i'm about to be about to make be separate in the record from my previous state i know that objections ordered thank you mr president mr president we had a controversy over and spirited debate over immigration one on the floor of the senate for several weeks and many members of the senate thought about it one way or the other and that result as nothing happened that's unfortunate everybody concedes our immigration laws have broken down about six hundred thousand illegal people come into the united states each year and stay over twenty years we now have twelve million people the number continues to grow the lure of the united states is overwhelming it is a lower which brought my grandparents and my mother to this country as immigrants they want to be part of america they were willing to leave their village in lithuania and the comfort there for an opportunity they came here struggled and sacrificed is immigrants to became americans and i think in the small way our families made a difference in this country now repeat that story millions of times and that's who we are as a nation we are people who or unhappy dissatisfied with what they had and saw america has a better chance and they came here and they continue to come here and our borders can't hold them back at this moment and so we debated about making those border stronger more enforcement in the workplace how many workers do we need each year to pick our crops and do our work in addition to the american  we do with the twelve million who are here it was a big bill the debate went on for three weeks which is a long time by senate standards and at the end of the debate we couldn't pass it we didn't have the sixty votes we weren't even close we had forty six votes cast in favor of comprehensive immigration reform mr president there were aspects of that bill though that we should not abandon there were parts of it that we have to return to i think we need to return to enforcement so that our borders are safer that there are fewer illegals crossing into the united states i think we need enforcement in the workplace to make sure that employers meet their responsibilities but there are several other parts of the bill which we can't ignore either senator dianne feinstein of california has been a leader on the issue of agriculture workers in her on a full state the fruits and vegetables will frankly spoil in the fields if they don't bring in workers to pick them and harvest them americans are not lining up for these jobs they're hard dirty sweaty tough jobs immigrants will come and do it they've done it before and she's trying to have the ag workers have an opportunity under the law to come and do this work otherwise we're going to lose a lot of our agriculture in america there's another aspect of the law which is near and dear to me consider someone undocumented or illegal who comes to the united states and brings a child it happens that child may come at a very early age maybe a baby in arms or one or two years old and that child will be raised in the united states go through schools and reach a point in their lives where they don't know any other place but america they didn't choose this country their parents chose it they didn't come here because of any thought about being illegal they came here with their families what i tried to do several years ago was to write a lot to consider taking to consideration these young people it's called the dream act and the dream act was a part of this comprehensive immigration reform here's what it says the dream act says this if you have been came to the united states before the age of sixteen if you've lived in this country for at least five years if you graduate from high school and then if you will complete either two years of college or two years of service in the military we will give you an opportunity for legal status in america i've met these kids young men and women what a waste it would be to turn them away and currently that's all our law can do is say to them if your parents were undocumented and illegal you have no in america at a time when we're importing talent and labor from other places why would we turn these young people away first they beat the odds only half for example of hispanic kids graduate high school these kids have to graduate high school to even have a chance to become legal second they're going to do more with their lives and that's why i wanted to raise the issue very briefly this morning on the floor of the when we return next week is the defense authorization bill it turns out the department of defense believes as i do that the dream act is an important part of making certain that we have talented young men and women ready to serve in our military i've spoken to people at the department defense who support the idea of the dream act and i think that we are included in the fences for authorization bill and i hope to have that opportunity for the tens of thousands across america young people who just want to chance to be part of america to contribute to america the dream act is their opportunity they have to work their way into it they have to prove themselves so they will have a chance the nice thing about this amendment is both sides the aisle agree on it we have strong bipartisan sponsorship of this amendment i hope that when we return to the defense authorization bill that we can make the dream act part of that bill certainly it's going to help our defense and help our military i think it's going to help america even beyond that those young men and women given a chance to serve in the military will be citizens of this country some day who will make an important contribution as always as all of our veterans do those who choose to go to college here on a path to becoming tomorrow's doctors and nurses and researchers  business people the kind of energy that every society needs and the kind of energy that has built this great country that we have today and so mr president i encourage my colleagues to consider the dream act as an amendment this defense authorization bill as part of our national security i will have a chance to debate it in its entirety and i will return to it when we come back to this bill next week in the meantime i ask my entire statement be made part of the record  next week which is the defense authorization bill now constituents people who are have been watching the proceedings of the senate for the last week might be a little confused because if they know a little bit about how the senate has historically done its business they know that the defense authorization bill is the bill that we adopt each year to set the policies and the spending priorities for the defense department to ensure that our national security will remain strong for the next year  however this year instead of talking about the acquisition of equipment that we need the new aegis cruisers that we're going to be sending around the world deploying to ensure that we have a missile defense that is not only on land but on the seas and sort of talking about the space test bed a research project that enables us to know among other things where to find out how to deal with and i satellite weapons that the chinese for example might use to destroy our satellites or instead of talking about the need to increase the number of our military or primarily our soldiers and marines by about ninety thousand so that we have a more robust military to have boots on the ground anywhere in the world instead of debating these various issues about our military posture we've spent almost the entire week focused on what on the argument about the iraq war now it is perfectly appropriate to debate issues relative to the war against terrorists and certainly the main battlefield in that war against terrorists today is iraq but it seems to me that our focus is a little law when instead of looking at the things we could do to make the united states more secure by focusing on this defense authorization bill and the specific elements of it we are instead focusing on arguments about how quickly to withdraw from iraq we have in place a new strategy in iraq at the end of last year after the election when secretary rumsfeld left his position as secretary of defense the president said all right i believe that we have not had a successful strategy and we're going to have a new strategy and that strategy was announced in january sometimes called the surge but what it really involved was a combination of involving iraqis more in the defense securing of their country and the application of a very focused u s force of increased strength in specific areas of the country not just to take those areas but to hold them once they were taken in the past we would move into an area we would clear it of the enemy and then after a few days we would leave what happened to the enemy would just filter right back into the same area sometimes establishing an even stronger presence than they had before that obviously didn't work and the president realized and everybody in the country said the election results show that you need to have a new strategy so the president working with the iraqis working with general petraeus david petraeus was confirmed unanimously by the u s senate to go over and develop and execute a new strategy and working with them the president devised this new strategy of taking and holding the key areas of iraq so that peace and stability could be brought to that war torn country and the opportunity for the government then to grab a hold of the situation and do the things it needs to do would really be given full effect that strategy counted on five new brigades of u s forces consisting of over twenty five thousand on the ground servicemen going in to join up with about twice as many iraqi army units and police units to effectuate this strategy of of clearing and holding and maintaining control that i mentioned before that strategy finally about two weeks ago has been put into full force with the arrival of the last of the five brigades and they have gone into both and our province which is almost a third of the country of iraq largely controlled by it's called a sunni area and largely controlled by tribal leaders and into baghdad which is obviously the primary population center of the country where a lot of the previous shiite and sunni conflict was occurring what have we seen in this debate over the defense authorization bill we've seen attempt after attempt after attempt on the other side of the aisle to declare the war lost the strategy of failure and therefore a commitment by the united states senate to direct the president to begin bringing the troops home next tuesday where i believe it's tuesday we will actually vote on an amendment that has as its specific directive a mandate that we begin bringing the troops home within a very specific time i believe it's one hundred twenty days now and that that withdrawal be complete within roughly a year again i forgot the exact date clearly predicated on the notion that we've either lost or can't win that there's no point in allowing this new strategy to play out to see whether it gets sixty and to tell the entire world that we are leaving iraq now it is they put a little pink ribbon around it and said oh but we'll leave some forces over the horizon so that we can ride to the rescue if anything bad happens as if there is not a clear common understanding that a lot bad will of course happen or the need to maintain some presence to help train iraqi troops is prison i want to ask unanimous consent at this point to put in the record an article by stephen b dated july eleventh that was carried in the washington post without objection so ordered thank you must present the reason i want to put this article in the record is that it very clearly points out the problem with the strategy of many of the democrats that i've just outlined here the notion that somehow you could reduce our forces by perhaps half or more and still achieve this goal of defeating al qaeda and training up the iraqi units one of his key points is that the only way you can stick cesspool a train up these iraqi units is having relatives stability in the country that if you have an out of control war going on you got to be fighting that war and it's very difficult to at the same time be training up these force that the best way to train the iraqi military is to work in conjunction with u s units as general petraeus has devised go into an area clear it and then leave primarily the iraqi units behind to continue to maintain control in the area but if you have constant fighting and you haven't been able to clear a whole the area those iraqi troops never be able to never have that opportunity for the experience of holding the area and so as mr biddle points out you can't have it both ways this compromise may satisfy some political requirements back home but it's totally unworkable in the place where it matters and that's in iraq you can't withdraw half or more of the troops quickly and have any chance of success in maintaining peace and stability and in helping to train up the iraqi forces so why are people in the united states senate focused on bringing the troops home or otherwise micromanaging the way that the president deploys the units to achieve the missions objectives well it's either one of two things now from outside this body i know there are a lot of people who have a motive of trying to make the president look bad and of undercutting his authority and undermining the strategy that he's following here i gather because both for partisan reasons and because they just don't think it can work but within the body here in the chamber  i know that my colleagues do not want any american life to have been lost in vain and that they they trays are the  everyday life that has been put on the line here that's why it's troublesome to me to have to defeat amendments which have as their core point  undercutting the president's authority micromanaging the war from the congress and specifically calling for early withdrawal by early i mean before the surge has even had an opportunity to play out in that regard mr president i'd like to insert into the record a piece that was carried this morning in the washington post by charles krauthammer and i ask  in the record without objection so ordered thank you mr president what charles krauthammer who is a very knowledgeable analyst and writer on this subject has said is patris plan has the makings of a successful strategy it has already begun to show some positive results and that it would be folly to declare it a failure before it even has a chance to play out everybody knows that general petraeus is going to report back to the congress and to the president in september of this year and he'll be accompanied by ambas to iraq who will give us a report on the status of the situation now it has never been contemplated that that's the end of the of the matter by any stretch of imagination sensible have only been a few months since the strategy will have been in place but at least give us an idea of how it's working and why anybody would want to set a different course not hours before he gives that report is beyond me and certainly beyond charles krauthammer krauthammer points out that this new strategy has already begun to show success for example in the anbar province which was an area that was almost exclusively controlled by al qaida and let me just digress for a moment to make this point you heard discussion several months ago about a civil war in iraq and it's true that there were elements of sunni and shiite iraqis who were fighting each other and some were calling that a civil war but two things are important to know about that the first is that much of that fighting was instigated by al qaeda had come into the sunni areas and had a declared intention to start a fight between the the is shiites and the sunni's when the fight didn't materialize al  to some arm a holy place for shiites and blew up one of their most revered shrines the golden mosque and in fact it's been twice attacked thus in effect poking the nose of bear to the point that the bear had to react and the shiites did react they said if the iraqi army cannot protect our holy sites by golly we will or whatever the iraqi phrases and they created militias that began attacking s and you did have a lot of shiite on sunni and vice versa violence but the first point is it was largely instigated by al qaida who knew precisely what it was doing and had a declared strategy to begin that fight we have the intelligence to demonstrate that the second point is that al qaeda since since that violence has to some extent now subsided because of the surge we have gone into these shiite neighborhoods for example and we have persuaded the shiite leadership to stop the militias from acting stop the violence and call the neighborhoods down so that life can return to normal and to a large to in at least half of baghdad that has now been what's occurring and in the sunni areas we went to the tribal leaders there and said look al qaeda is causing you more problems than it solv eventually these tribal leaders came back to our troops and to the iraqi leadership and said you're right we have now seen what life under al qaeda would be like it's a taliban kind of rule where they don't let us do anything they impose this very harsh penalty on anybody that isn't conforming to their way of life most of the al qaeda are coming into iraq from other countries they are foreigners to the iraqis and many of these tribal sheikhs almost all of them in anbar province said we are tired of dealing with these al qaeda terrorists and we want to join you in fighting them by the hundreds and thousands of young iraqis began joining the police and army to fight al qaeda and and our problems now as charles krauthammer details here and has our intelligence has also made very clear has become one of the strongest anti al qaeda areas in the country it has largely been pacified it is a good example of how this new strategy can work and what krauthammer says is we don't no yet if the same strategy will work in the mixed sunni shiite areas but we can see how it has worked and how it could work if we allow time for the transplant to play out and he points out that a month ago patrice was asked whether we can still win in iraq and i'm going to quote here the general who had recently attend two memorial services for soldiers lost under his command replied that if he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the life of a single soldier mr president that is a very important concept for us to remember back here because when people talk about supporting the troops it seems to me that the first type of support that we should be providing is the moral support for these soldiers to support their mission not only to provide everything they need in terms of material support and training but to ensure but to assure them that they are not risking their lives in vain that we will continue to support the mission that we've sent them on that they think they can win and believe they are winning that the worst thing that we can do is to have expressions here in the u s senate that we think they've lost or that they can't win and therefore we want to begin declaring defeat and leaving the battlefield at that point as it was back in vietnam it becomes a question of who's the last man out and who is the last person to risk death for what for a timetable that cannot be why we send young men and women into combat into harm's way and for those who believe it's already lost or that it is a failure and that we cannot succeed i say to them you have an obligation then to try to bring them home immediately because not one more day should should pass for people to risk life for nothing more the no timetable i don't happen to believe that general petraeus doesn't happen to believe that and i believe that we can allow the prius plan to have the time it needs to show that it can succeed not just in anbar province but in other places in iraq as well let me quote another couple sentences from krauthammer piece just this week betray us said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time to provide all three of his plan just as it is beginning krauthammer says the last surge troops arrived only last month on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare victory  deluded or dishonorable well he is clearly not deluded or dishonorable i regret that some of my colleagues believe that the only way to resolve the situation in iraq is to begin leaving now that would be a strategy for failure and i ask my colleagues this we have in this body made pronouncements that we need to help people in places like dollar for where there is a genocide occurred and we have always tried to help people whether it be in kosovo or afghanistan or innocently isn't it interesting that in two of those places we're talking about largely muslim countries and in places like somalia also a predominance of muslims we cannot as a nation ignore what would happen in iraq were we to leave prematurely almost all of the intelligence in the baker hamilton report which is cited by many of my colleagues confirms this as well acknowledge that if we leave iraq before the iraqis can maintain peace and stability that the kind of genocide and killing and terrorism that would ensue would be almost incalculable thousands if not hundreds of thousands and more would die many believe that that blood would be on our hands if we're the ones who walk out before they have the ability to prevent that kind of violence al qaeda clearly is the primary enemy now as i talked about before the largely shiite sunni violence has subsided to a significant degree and most of what is occurring against our forces and against other iraqis today is being perpetrated by al  if we leave and al qaeda in iraq is allowed basically a free hand most predict that it will have created a situation where like it did in afghanistan qaeda will have the ability to train to plan attacks and to have refuge from any kind of action to stop them from doing so they would also have access to the oil well of the country of iraq and to the other resources of the country to the extent that anybody in iraq has tried to be a friend of the united states or cooperate with the iraqi government all of those people remember with the purple foams they would be targeted by the thugs and terrorists who would reign in iraq they would undoubtedly be  executed think of saddam hussein's regime think back when the north vietnamese came sweeping into south vietnam and all of the boat people fled and those who didn't get away were sent to the quote re education camps or killed think of cambodia when we left there with three million cambodians killed were we to leave iraq hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will die largely innocent people and that blood will be on our hands but mr president that's not the worst of it the united states security will have been significantly jeopardized because we will in the war against the terrorists to the terrorists we will have been defeated by the terrorists much more than their sneak attack on september eleventh defeated us it killed three thousand americans it it was like pearl harbor the attack that awoke the sleeping giant to finally recognize that after having been attacked i believe it was six times previously by al qaeda we finally realized we're going to war with these people whether we want to fight or not they're going to attack us and we better fight back we began to do that but i fear that there is a a tiredness beginning seep into some around the world and even among some americans in fighting this enemy that's very elusive and that generally doesn't fight us on the battlefield but rather waits and waits and waits and then as soon as we relax in gauges in a sneak attack they've tried to do it against our allies they've done it in some cases in great britain and spain for example other activities have been thwarted and we've been very fortunate because of our homeland security that we've for those attacks here at home but we're not only going to have we're not always going to have a battlefield on which to confront them what confuses me is the argument of some of my colleagues that we should see the one place where they have directly confronted us on the battlefield iraq cede that battle to the enemy by prematurely withdrawing our troops and somehow reconfiguring our effort to fight them in a different way in a different place the false argument that well maybe if we leave iraq we can really focus on them in afghanistan that's a false choice we're fighting them in both places and if we need more elements of support in afghanistan and we should send them there that's supposed to be a nato exercise and a lot of our nato friends could be doing more there to help us i happen to think we could use more help there but it's a false argument to say that we shouldn't be trying to fight them in both places when the enemy has finally come out on to the battlefield and is confronting us in the one area where we know we can defeat them namely with the united states military nobody can beat the united states military it's the best military in the world and the best military that's ever existed and al qaida is no match for our military and when they are willing to basically come out of their holes and confront us in iraq for us not to directly attack kill or capture as many of them as possible would be the ultimate in negligence and fecklessness in fighting the war against terrorists they are the terrorists they are there and we are able to kill them there why we would not engage the enemy in the place where there are the most of them is beyond me now what that means is that we're putting our young men and women in harm's way they have volunteered for this mission in which they believe deeply because they have looked into the eye of the enemy they have seen the evil that is there and they have been willing to lay their lives on the line given that fact and given the fact that we have a brilliant commander with a strategy that appears to be working would the united states congress pull a rug out from under the operation out from under general petraeus and our troops at the moment when they have their hands around the neck of the enemy and can deal a very severe  to this evil enemy that is beyond my comprehension it takes nothing from the argument that we should be engaged in intelligence operations around the world that we should be trying our best to get osama bin laden and there's an argument that suggest that somehow we aren't that denigrates the efforts of our special forces and the others who believe me are trying their very best to get this guy and other leadership of the of al qaeda but somehow suggest that we should leave iraq because the enemy exists in other places is not only totally illogical but as i said which would be a very effective us approach to trying to win this war against the terrorists another thing that bothers me mr president relates directly to the bill that we are debating and we're going to see it next week and we saw it this morning is a notion that has begun to creep into the into the discussion that maybe this is not really a war at all one of the candidates for president has called this just a bumper sticker well their effort to make this a criminal enterprise in other words to criminalize the war rather than to treat it as the war that it  is is very troublesome to me now this morning we had an amendment that was drafted to provide instead of a twenty five million dollar reward to get some of bin laden it was a it up to fifty million dollars for the capture or kilt and so we added the word or death to the amendment by a second degree amendment that was adopted this morning but next week we're going to get right back to this argument about criminalization versus war there is in the bill and we're going to have to strike the language from the bill with an amendment language that requires us to send lawyers over to a raft iraq and afghanistan to represent these terrorists who we capture on the battlefield we're going to give them legal representation in theater and we're going to have to show them classified information that may be used in their prosecution or continued detention  that's nuts i hate to use that kind of phrase on the senate floor but i don't think it represents good policy we're going to strike that language from the bill that's criminalization of a war this is a war against evil people who will kill us if they can and the sooner we recognize that fact and deal with them the sooner we will defeat the enemy and the enemy will no longer represent us to us we cannot assume that they don't really mean it we cannot assume that we can negotiate with them and we cannot begin to just treat them as if they are defendants in an american criminal trial they are evil terrorists who deserve to be dealt with on the battlefield as we have dealt with historically all of our enemies so mr president i hope that next week we can turn from some of the amendments that have been used here to primarily undercut the the strategy in dealing with the iraq war to debate about some key provisions of the defense authorization bill which do need our attention i've got a couple of amendments i hope we can deal with there and that we can also strike from the bill a provision which would allow a new theory of criminal law to intrude into the  battlefield to deal with the p o w s there or the detainees as they're called as if they're criminal defendants in american court rather than the p o w s or into me detainees that in fact they are and i hope that at the conclusion of the debate next week we will have continued to defeat any of these amendments that undercut our effort in iraq continue to support the mission of the troops and thereby the troops and strengthen the defense authorization bill so that for the next year we have a bill that strongly supports the troops and provides for the national security of the united states of america time on the war in iraq and what's taking place there but i want to focus a great set of comments on is what we need to do want to political solution on iraq i think we're at all caught up and clearly we need to be on a military solution but the military only gives us space  political solution kerry solution is not going to ultimately solve the situation in iraq you have to have a political durable solution to solve it unless we're willing to sit for an undefined a number of years with a large number of troops engaged in a very active military setting you've got to get a political durable situation in iraq and on the ground it's going to be realistic about what we're going to do and i think as worked with senator biden on this proposal mo talk about a resolution the two of us have together on a political solution chairs boring relations committee i've been on that committee for a number of years i think you have to realize that populations are dealing with and the situation is not this similar in some respects when we saw what took place in the former yugoslavia w had a number of different populations where history had washed over this place with a number of different ways of individuals thoughts and philosophies and then after tito it leaves and you take all this big military apparatus  intelligence apparatus that's want to kill a lot of people to enforce power you're left with a number of different sectarian groups that don't get along and now yugoslavia six countries into a thomas regions after hundreds of thousands of people were killed in multiple set a civil wars that took place i think that's that's instructive from the standpoint of that's what takes place when you take off big military apparatus off of areas where you've got non uniform or non homogenous populations we're seeing this take place in the sudan today where sudan was put together a large company believe geographically the largest country in africa but together designed by the british but you have in sudan a north that's dominant by arab and muslim in a south it's black and christian by and large and they don't get along and it was two million killed in the south and the south was going to vote to succeed and now you're seeing the genocide taking place in the west and dar for by this government a militant islamic regime in khartoum and what they're doing and are for a new world is growing in its awareness of what's taking place in darfur but i think we have to recognize it's situation in iraq as you have several different populations have a kurdish population that's separate that's distinct it's on operate its own area doing a very nice job and peace and stability is there in january and there's growth taking place not in every place but it's doing pretty well you have a mixed sunni and shia population in the rest the country dominant sunni in some area dominant she and other areas and in baghdad a mixed federal city i think we have to look at that situation and recognize the mixture and the combustibility that that mixture is and get to a more durable political solution and you're seeing now an ongoing migration of iraqis inside their own country which i think suggest iraq will eventually move to what some would call a soft partition and that's the logical thing that would take place and that is taking place today it's an outcome with many historical precedents most notably and recently in bosnia in the one nine hundred ninety s so senator biden and i have introduced a resolution calling on the iraqis to reach an agreement that would formalize a federal system in iraq consistent with their constitution that would allow for kurds sunni's and shia to manage their own affairs as baghdad remaining a federal capital city it is increasingly clear to me that we should start taking interim steps now to facilitate a three state one country solution in iraq which should begin by acknowledging that many iraqis whose lives are threatened because of their sectarian affiliation are on the move more iraqis facing sectarian violence are considering moving as tragic as these movements seem now they are preferrable to the mass migrations that would occur if iraq were to implode there are steps that we can take now to ease the process of internal migration start by authorizing our commanders on the ground to help families who express a desire to relocate to areas where they would join a sectarian majority relocating families will require secure passage to safer areas and probably rely on economic assistance to reestablish themselves those who wish to relocate should be assisted to do in this fashion i do not expect that the iraqi people will create three completely homogenous regions in fact the level of sunni and shia intermarriage will preclude such an outcome but we should be attentive that those believe their security is enhanced by moving out of mixed neighborhoods to areas where they do not face the danger of sectarian violence indeed there was some reporting of people swapping houses that were sunni in a dominant shia area and shia in a dominant sunni area and swapping houses not even selling them but they would feel more secure and this particularly after one of their family members in the bank kidnapped or killed i think that makes some sense as populations continue to move we also need to take steps to avert other aspects of an implosion we need to ensure the kurdish region which has been a bedrock of stability to this point remains a stable area turkey is rightly concerned about the threat of terrorism coming from across the iraqi border to reassure our turkish allies and eliminate their need to intervene in iraq to protect their own security we should bolster the counterterrorism capabilities of iraqi forces deployed in that region much as we have done in georgia and in other nations where terrorist try to establish a safe haven and destabilize their region our military strategy certainly depends on the stable kurdish region our political vision of iraq also requires the kurdish area to remain strong and i hope we can move quickly to address terrorism issues there there are other steps we should take to prepare iraq for a federal political settlement must take additional steps to secure the iraqi arraigning in border to be able great benefit to the troops executing the surge as well as mitigate any attempts iran might have or think that it has to exploit a future three state federal version of iraq and lastly should place new emphasis on local and provincial elections in iraq mr president i raise these issues because i do not believe we can precipit  lee pull out of iraq nor should we but i think we have to recognize the situation on the ground for what it is and facilitate it before you see mass more sectarian violence taking place and we can do this and in a civil fashion save lives and that's what this is about it's about saving lives we have seen this play before we've seen it recently in yugoslavia we are saying that today in sudan why can't we see this and say we're going to save lives by facilitating this rather than creating a combustible situation that blows up on us later on this is consistent with the iraqi constitution it is a more robust political solution which matches our needs militarily on the ground and i finally say mr president i've traveled the country a lot i hear a number of people out there they don't want to lose in iraq but they don't see it on a track to win and what they are after is us coming together here to provide that solution of how we can win and what i'm talking about is a political solution that is gravity that is our military solution is the military gives us space for the political to act but we've got to get it moving and that is a situation where we can win and we can go to the american people say we're on a track to win and being able to pull our forces back the on the front lines and reduce the death loss that we're experiencing as a country that my state is experiencing as the big red one station airport riley kansas is experiencing we can do this i think we need to show some foresight some bipartisanship to get that the senate then proceed to its consideration senate resolution two sixty eight designating july twelfth two thousand and seven as national summer learning day mr president without objection the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed the measure physicians who condemned recent attempted terrorist acts in the united kingdom without objection the senator proceed to the measure mr president i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to the preamble be agreed to and motion to reconsider be l further consideration of as nine seven five and that the senate proceed to its immediate consideration clerk a report as nine seventy five a bill granting the consent approval of congress to an interstate for protection compact without objection the committee's discharge and center will proceed to the measure i ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and pass the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table and any statements legislation submission of statements and co sponsorship without objection sword mr president i ask unanimous consent that a collection of statements made in tribute to the late first lady of the united states lady bird johnson together with appropriate illustrations and other materials relating to her death be printed without objections or mr president i ask unan consent that when the senate completes its business today its stand adjourned until two p m monday july sixteenth that on monday following the prayer and pledge the journal of proceedings be approved to date the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day that there be a period of morning business and till three p m with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each that with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees that it's three p m the senate resumed consideration of h r fifteen eighty five projection without objection stored as previously announced there are no roll call votes monday however members should be prepared for votes throughout the week if there is no further business today s  that i now asked the senate proceed to executive session to consider the executive calendar number one six three that the nomination be confirm the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table and the senate return to legislative session without objection so ordered present this nomination is for the secretary of the united states