Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Act, 2004

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN SECURITY AND RECONSTRUCTION ACT, 2004

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, today, as has been stated by my colleagues, starts one of the most important debates that we will have in this Congress or any Congress, I believe. And the decision that is going to be made over the next 2 weeks will, in all consequence, be as important as the decision that was made in October a year ago when this body voted to grant the authority to the President to bring us to war, a resolution which I voted against.

At the outset, I want to speak briefly to the amendment before the Senate; that is, the amendment of the Senator from West
Virginia separating those items that could be considered reconstruction and rehabilitation, and those items which are directly related to the support of our troops and say why I believe this is so important. That is because we do not have a good idea about what the administration's policy is on the issues of rehabilitation and the reconstruction in Iraq. We don't have the plan of the administration.

I don't say that lightly. I am a member of the Armed Services Committee. Just a week ago we had Ambassador Bremer before us. The members of our committee were sent this document which is called the "Coalition Provisional Authority, Achieving the Vision to Restore Full Sovereignty to the Iraqi People." It is 28 pages long. The cover page says:

A working document of July 23.

We are now on the 1st of October. We had hearings a week ago. We were given the working document of July 23, these 28 pages. If you review this document about our strategy in Iraq, you will find out on the various pages—take page 9—we will, on the issues of security and giving the goals, August to October, they say in item 4 on that page, locate, secure, and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, from August to October. From November to January, continue to locate and eliminate the weapons of mass destruction. Then, February on, it says continue to locate and secure and eliminate the weapons of mass destruction.

That is the plan. This program is full of those kinds of platitudinous, empty statements and is basically an insult to our troops and to our Congress. During the course of that hearing, the Senator from Michigan asked Mr. Bremer when we would have a more comprehensive document as to what the plan is on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq. This is his quote on September 25:

I will keep you informed, but I want to keep my hands free as to how I do that.

That was an answer to Senator Levin, the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, when he asked Ambassador Bremer: You have submitted this document to us, which is a working document, July 23. When is this going to be updated? When are we going to get the plan?

He said:

I will keep you informed, but I want to keep my hands free as to how I do that.

And we have not had anything since that time. We had one document and that is the 58 or 59 pages that lists the items requested. It is not a plan; it is a budget. It is a budget on various items that are going to be necessary, but no plan.

The administration and the military knew how to win the war. That was never going to be the challenge or the question. But they have had no plan on how to win the peace. They still don't have a plan to win the peace. The Byrd amendment is trying to separate what is called for in terms of the support for our troops to this rehabilitation and reconstruction, to try to get the administration prior to the time we are going to have a final vote to say what is the plan on rehabilitation, what is the plan in terms of reconstruction. But we have not had that. We have not had it in the Armed Services Committee.

We have the long list of items, some of which I will refer to in my comments, but we still don't have the plan. The fact is, it is being made up every single day over in Iraq. As we consider those reports we all see every evening or morning on the Americans who lose their lives over there, we also haven't got a real understanding of what security is like in the major populated areas of that community. As we are reminded in the excellent study that has been done by Mr. Dobbins and RAND, it talks about how historically those individuals who are subject to occupation view those who occupy their country. Perhaps some start off and support them as liberators, but others will never forgive them for occupying their country.

But there is one powerful factor and force, and that is the issue of security. It is security not just out in the streets and the highways between various communities, but it is what is happening in downtown Baghdad every single day and night. The number of people who are getting killed, the numbers who are coming into the morgues, the break-ins taking place in people's houses, and the rapes taking place in those communities have given a sense of insecurity to the people in Baghdad and many other communities. We don't have a plan about how we are going to deal with this. We are told we are training the police—40-some-odd-thousand police—who were there under Saddam Hussein, the great majority of whom were torturers and exterminators. But we have a new view and we are retraining them in some particular way.

I talked with some extraordinarily impressive young Americans who just came from Faluja. I talked with them in Massachusetts, and they pointed out that the Iraqi police trained in their area won't leave the barracks. They are frightened that if they are seen leaving the barracks, something will happen to them or their families.

As we know, as the very important Dobbins document points out, whether you are talking about Algeria, Northern Ireland, or Malaysia in 1958, or the West Bank, or Kosovo—any of these areas—what you need to do is start to train a disciplined police force, and it takes 12 to 15 months—a new force adequately trained and highly motivated and that can move toward the security issues. That is not the case. We are asked to pour billions of dollars in taxpayers' funds into Iraq.

I think any fair reading of these requests would have to say the overall strategy—whatever it is—is a top-down strategy, not a bottom-up one. What we are seeing in the initial reports coming from Iraq is the areas where they are having the greatest progress is where the stakeholders are buying into the efforts in these local communities. Most of the positive reports are coming as a result of the leadership of the military, many of whom have gone through the campaigns in Kosovo and other parts of the world, where they have seen what can work and what is necessary.

So it is appropriate that we have some opportunity to talk about and ask about this amount of resources that are being requested to go to Iraq. There are a number of questions, obviously, that are going to be raised, such as the whole issue of contracting and who is getting the contracting. What are the circumstances of those contracts? What kind of transparency is there over there? Are we taking these contracts with single-bid contracts, with those who have a questionable record in terms of the performance, and overcharging the Defense Department? Are we giving opportunities for contracts to other countries around the world who have had a relationship and know how to be able to reconstruct and rebuild? Are we excluding them? What are the circumstances of this?

These issues are going to be raised, as they should be. It is not clear from what is coming out from the Appropriations Committee that many of these issues have been addressed. I know they will be by my colleagues. It is not just about the administration's policy and its conduct in Iraq. It is about the way we pursue American interests in a dangerous world, about the way our Government makes one of the most important decisions, whether to send young men and women to war.

It is wrong to put American lives on the line for a dubious cause. Many of us continue to believe the war in Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time. There were alternatives short of a premature rush to a unilateral war, alternatives that could have accomplished our goals in Iraq with far fewer casualties and far less damage to our goals in the war against terrorism.

I commend my friend and colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, for once again reminding us what Mr. Tenet, who was head of the CIA, reminded the Armed Services Committee time in and time out—all of last year, up until the period of August—that the greatest threat to the United States was terrorism and, obviously, the increasing concern that all of us have about North Korea, Iran, and the deterioration and spiraling violence in the Middle East.

Our troops deserve a plan that will bring in adequate foreign forces immediately to share the burden of restoring the security and involve the international community in building a new democracy for the future of Iraq.

There is no question the Senate owes it to our men and women in uniform to provide the support they need, to bring the day closer when our troops can come home with dignity and honor, and Iraq will truly be free.

The $87 billion cannot be a blank check. That is why I support the Byrd amendment. Congress must hold the administration accountable. The American people deserve to know how the money will be spent. Things are out of control in Iraq. We need to stop the downward spiral, protect our interests, and protect the lives of American soldiers.

The administration must tell the country in much greater detail what it intends to do with the $87 billion and its plans for
sharing the burden with our allies and the United Nations to achieve our goals. The American people are entitled to know whether, with all the current difficulties, the administration has a plausible plan for the future instead of digging the current hole even deeper.

Our soldiers' lives are constantly at stake. Patriotism is not the issue. The safety of our 140,000 American service men and women serving in Iraq today is the immediate issue. It is our solemn responsibility to question, and question vigorously, the administration's current request for funds. So far, the administration has failed utterly to provide a plausible plan for the future of Iraq and ensure the safety of our troops.

In its rush to war, the administration failed to recognize the danger and the complexity of the occupation. They repeatedly underestimated the likely cost of this enormous undertaking. Opposing voices in the administration were ignored.

Last September, the chief Presidential economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, said that the total cost of the Iraqi involvement might be as much as $200 billion. His estimate was quickly rejected by White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels who said Mr. Lindsey's estimate was "very, very high" and suggested the cost to be a more manageable $50 billion or $60 billion.

I raise this history because in many instances the people who are making the recommendations on the rehabilitation of Iraq are the same ones who miscalculated and misdirected the policy for months in the past. If we are going to take a look at this policy today, it is only appropriate to see what they had suggested over the past months.

As I mentioned, when Mr. Lindsey was corrected by Mitch Daniels who said Mr. Lindsey's estimate was "very, very high" and suggested the cost would be a more manageable $50 billion or $60 billion, the independent analysis indicated the cost might approach $300 billion, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called that "baloney."

I say that against the background of what Ambassador Bremer, when he was asked, when he was before the Armed Services Committee, about this $21 billion or $23 billion, whether we could expect they would be back before the appropriators and asking for more billions of dollars, and said: Don't count us out; don't count us out.

The American people ought to understand this is a downpayment for the administration. This isn't the beginning and the end. This is just the downpayment. We have to ask ourselves, What is the policy?

Last spring, as part of a broader coalition in an effort to win the support of the American people for the military, the administration began to argue that Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction. The war might be costly, we were told, but it would be quick and decisive. The financial obligation of the United States would be limited because the liberated Iraqi people would use their extraordinary wealth from the world's second largest reserves of oil to finance the reconstruction.

What the Nation heard from the Bush administration was clear: Don't worry about the cost. Iraq can pay for their own reconstruction.

Here they are a few weeks later with the $23 billion request. People ought to ask: Is this the beginning, the middle, or the end? What is the plan?

As the Congress debates the administration's request, we should be looking for better answers from the administration, insisting on at least minimal accountability. Before the war, the administration said, "Trust us," and Congress did. We should have followed President Reagan's wise counsel from years ago: "Trust but verify." Hopefully, it is not too late to verify.

Until this month, no one in the administration, other than Larry Lindsey, who is no longer in the administration, said the war with Iraq and its aftermath would be expensive. The administration's numbers were worse than fuzzy math, and the
American people have a right to be furious about the gross disparity with the true costs. And they will be even more furious as they learn more and more about what we are being asked to fund.

The administration, obviously, did at least have one clearly thought-out plan—they didn't have a plan for peace. They want $400 million for maximum security prisons. That is $50,000 a bed.

They want $800 million for international police training for 1,500 officers. That is $530,000 per officer. Ask any mayor what it costs them to train a police officer in their community.

They want a fund for consultants at $200,000 a year. That is double normal pay. They want $1.4 billion to reimburse cooperating nations for support provided to U.S. military operations. I would love to find out how that money is going to be spent. For what is that $1.4 billion intended?

The Bush administration went to the United Nations for help last week, hat in hand and wallet open. But so far the response from other nations has been: Why should we help clean up America's mess in Iraq?

Presumably, the negotiating is still continuing over how much authority the U.N. will have, how many contracts other nations will receive, and how many troops they will send. Could this be the most embarrassing week the United States has ever had at the United Nations?

Trust but verify. That is why Congress has to stop writing a blank check for Iraq. That is why Congress needs better answers. That is why we need accountability. Credibility on the war is in tatters both at home and in the United Nations, and our troops are paying for it with their lives.

Our action on this legislation may well be a defining moment for the war on Iraq, for the war on terrorism, for America's role in the world. Cut and run is not an option. Hopefully, a concerned Congress and a chastened administration can work together to set things right on Iraq and right with other nations.

If there is any silver lining to this crisis, let us hope it is that the administration's go-it-alone policy toward the rest of the world is history and we are back on a better and less dangerous course for the future.

Madam President, I yield the floor.