Iraq

Floor Speech

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, next week the administration is poised to give us and the American people a rosy assessment of the situation in Iraq. They are going to suggest that in fact there has been no escalation in Iraq, and that everything is just fine. Well, everything isn't just fine, and there is in fact an escalation going on in the violence all over Iraq. What the President's policy is is a bait-and-switch policy.

The American troops were sent to Iraq to fight al Qaeda, to fight terrorists. Now we see American troops inserted into combat, coming under fire, dying, and being wounded for the sake of one Shia political party that is afraid that it might lose an election in October. What are the American troops doing fighting for the electoral advantage of one Shia party over another?

Recently, the Pentagon suggested that this was all a sign of success of the surge. I think we should watch those words closely; you may miss something. This administration earlier told the people that the troop surge was for the purposes of decreasing the violence and creating an environment of political reconciliation. The people who were supposed to create political reconciliation are now shooting at one another because they think they might lose an election in October, and they want us to sacrifice American lives to impose the majority that they hope to have in that election.

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