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after Feingold - not the longer speech before he debated Warner. Relevant paragraph in bold.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am going to speak, obviously, a little bit in an abbreviated fashion at this point, and then I will reserve time and speak again later because of the way things have worked out.
I want to thank the Senator from Wisconsin. I want to thank him for his foresight and his leadership with respect to this issue, and I also want to thank him for his cooperation and efforts in the last days to put together what I think is a reasonable and sensible approach to how we deal with an obviously complicated situation.
Let me say that I have heard this debate over the course of the last days and I have listened carefully and I am saddened, in a sense--but I guess I have grown to expect it in the course of our politics--that there is an awful lot of characterization going around, an awful lot of stereotype sloganeering which tries to characterize something as other than what it is. It is what we have come to.
The fact is that this amendment is not what it is being characterized as. I have heard a number of people say it is a precipitous withdrawal. I have heard obviously the words ``cut and run'' and other words used many times.
Let me first point out the differences between this and the other amendment that has already been debated. First of all, this is binding . The other amendment is a sense of the Senate, and our troops and our country deserve more than a sense of the Senate. They deserve a policy.
Secondly, we have a date; the other is open-ended. It is almost like what President Bush is doing. We are going to stay the course and be open-ended.
Thirdly, this has an over-the-horizon force specifically to protect the security interests of the United States of America in the region and with respect to Iraq . But in addition to that, this amendment specifically strengthens the national security of the United States. It is not an abandonment of Iraq ; it is, in fact, a way of empowering Iraq to stand up on its two feet and for the Iraqis to be able to do what they have expressed their desire to do, which is have their sovereignty.
It is interesting. In the last day we had a huge debate about the sovereignty of Iraq , and colleague after colleague came down and said how important it is to respect the sovereignty of Iraq . Well, this amendment respects the sovereignty of Iraq . In fact, it increases the sovereignty of Iraq . It provides specifically for three provisos under which the President has the ability to be able to lead troops. There is no abandonment of Iraq . It sets a date by which, over the course of the next year, the Iraqis themselves have said they have the ability to be able to take over their own security. Prime Minister Maliki said a few days ago that by the end of this year--December--in 16 out of 18 provinces, they will be able to take care of their own security. This amendment holds them accountable.
In addition to that, it provides for the ability of the President to maintain a minimal number of forces who are critical to the job of standing up Iraqi security forces, of conducting targeted and specialized coun ter ter ror ism operations like the kind that got Zarqawi and also protecting United States facilities and personnel.
So even when you reach the date of next year--ample enough time for the Iraqis to complete the task of standing up--it will be 4 years, Mr. President, next year, and I think the American people have a right to expect that after 4 years, soldiers who have been trained over the course of those years are prepared to stand up for their country. In the United States of America, when we send a marine recruit to Pendleton or to Quantico, we can tell you in a matter of months when that recruit is ready for deployment. When we send a pilot to Corpus Christi or Pensacola, we can tell you exactly when they are ready to deploy. Is this administration telling us that after 4 years, we don't have Iraqis who are trained enough to drive trucks and perhaps be blown up by an IED, rather than an American soldier? Are they telling us they are not going to be prepared enough to be able to stand up for the security of Iraq ?
This amendment demands the same kind of accountability that the President was prepared to demand each step of the way of the Iraqis up until this point. We set a date for the transfer of the provisional Government. They said: Oh, we can't do it that fast. We said: You have to do it that fast, and we did it. We then set a date for the Constitution and the referendum. Some Senators, some of whom have spoken against this amendment, came out and said: Oh, I think it is too early. I don't think we ought to have that date. Many of us stood up and said: No, we have to hold the date and hold them to the date. Guess what. We did it. We held them to the date and we got the Constitution.
The same thing happened for both elections. A lot of people came up and said: Oh, we can't get this all together on time; we have to delay the election. We said: No, we are going to stick with the election date, and we did. General Casey himself has said that the large presence of American troops is lending to the occupation, the sense of occupation, and it is delaying the willingness Iraqis to stand up.
It is human nature. Anybody who has to go out and take the risk of loss of life, if somebody else is there to do it for you, you stand back. The fact is, countless numbers of conservative voices, including people like Bill Buckley, have suggested that the time has come for American forces to leave. He happens to believe, as others do, that it is lost. I think there is nothing in this amendment at all that, as some colleagues have said, that some people have decided it is all lost. I do not believe that.
I believe this is the way you empower the Iraqi Government, with its own people. This is the way you have accountability for what they need to achieve in the next year. This is the way you require their forces to take on responsibilities they may be reluctant to do today. And it allows for the President to make a determination that the job is not quite done and we can address the troops that may be necessary to complete that task.
That is anything but abandonment. I have heard some people say there is no plan. There is more plan here than there is in any other approach to what is happening in Iraq . Why do I say that?
Again, listen to our own generals. General Casey and others have all said that the reality is that this war cannot be won militarily. Our own commanding general is saying to us: You can't win it militarily. Secretary Condoleezza Rice has said it can't be won militarily, it must be won politically.
Our soldiers have done their job. Our soldiers have won the part of the war they need to win. They have given the Iraqi people a government. They have given the Iraqi people several elections. They have given them a constitution. Now it is time for Iraqis to stand up and want democracy for themselves as much as we want it for them. The best way to guarantee that is going to happen is to set a date with a proviso that the three things that we still need to do can still be done: make sure they are trained, continue to fight al-Qaida, and protect American forces and American facilities. All of that is provided for in this amendment.
This has been quoted a couple of times out here today, but let me remind my colleagues what the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister has said, himself, in ``The Way Out of Iraq , A Roadmap.''
The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors who have, to date, been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance to what they call the coalition occupation.
That is the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Iraq , telling us that withdrawing American troops will, in fact, help them provide order in the streets of Iraq .
The Senator from Virginia and I were in Iraq together. Nobody works harder in the Senate at protecting our security than he does. I respect him, and he knows he is my friend. He knows as well as others know here that what General Casey said is true. There is no military solution to what is happening in Iraq . You either resolve the differences between Shia and Sunni and provide for an adequacy of the differences that are fueling the insurgency or the insurgency will continue.
There are five different components of that insurgency. There are outright criminals, and there is organized crime. There is al-Qaida. You have the Baathists, who have one attitude about regaining power. And, of course, you have the insurgents who are different from the Baathists, who are hardcore.
Those are different elements that are going to have to be resolved in different ways. I ask any of my colleagues, where is the diplomacy necessary to deal with this? What we do in this is require the kind of diplomatic effort that, in fact, is a plan to resolve all of the problems that are outstanding in Iraq : the problems with respect to governments bordering the country, the problems with respect to Shia and Sunni, the problems with the divisions of royalties of oil, how do you protect the rights of Sunnis in the minority, what is the degree of federalism that will exist in the government. These are the reasons for the insurgency.
At this moment, I don't see the kind of effort I have seen historically, whether it was from Henry Kissinger in the Middle East with shuttle diplomacy, in Vietnam, or Jim Baker in his efforts to put together a major coalition with respect to Desert Storm--that doesn't exist today. So a policy to say ``stay the course'' is a policy to say you are not going to resolve those issues. It is a policy to hope that somehow the Iraqis will pull their act together. It is a policy that is based on more wishful thinking than on real policy changes that address the question of shifting responsibility.
When the Prime Minister of Iraq can tell us that they can manage 16 out of 18 provinces within a year, when 87 percent of the Iraqis are polled and say they think we ought to set a date for withdrawal of American troops, when 94 percent of the Sunnis say we ought to withdraw, when 90 percent of the Shias say we ought to withdraw, we ought to listen to the Iraqis. After all the talk in the last days about sovereignty, where is that respect for sovereignty?
I have more to say about why it is important for us to take this effort here. The long list of mistakes that have been made do not inspire confidence in the judgments made by this administration. Congress helped to get us into this war. Congress needs to take on responsibility for helping to get us out of it.
I had a lot more to say, and I have a lot more to say, but because of the way this is working, this will be truncated. I know I only have about a minute left so I reserve the remainder of the time, and we will go through the process and come back.
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