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Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, and I want to thank him for being a leader on bringing to the floor of the House not only this resolution asking for a vote about bringing our troops home from Iraq, but also the way that he speaks about the fact that 17 million American children go home at night hungry. That is another issue, I understand that, but it all ties in.
When we continue to not debate whether we should be sending our young men and women to die, we are shirking our constitutional responsibility that we, in this Congress, have raised our hand to swear that we will uphold the Constitution of the United States, but we don't do that, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to war, and I blame myself.
In 2003, I bought the lie that was told by the previous administration about the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein had and how he was going to use that against the American people.
That misinformation that was given by the previous administration caused us to go into Iraq, and I voted to give the President at the time--President Bush--the authority to bypass the Constitution.
It is called the AUMF, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and I regret that and will until the day I die because I gave up my constitutional responsibility to debate and to vote on whether we should go to war or not, and that was the constitutional responsibility of this Congress and of me being a Member of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I have beside me a poster of a funeral. It is a military funeral where a soldier has given his life for this country. His wife is there with her sunglasses on, holding the hand of her little girl who can't quite understand why her daddy is dead, why her daddy is in a flag-draped coffin.
That is why we need to be on this floor, as Mr. McGovern and Ms. Lee have said, to debate whether we continue to allow the President--in this case, President Obama--to use the War Powers Act to send our troops into Iraq, and yet, we sit here idle.
We don't even hardly debate the issue of war when we are going to pass millions and billions of dollars to be spent by our military overseas. It does not make any sense.
I want to say about my own side, I regret that my side, the Republican Party, we have become the war party now. It is not so much the Democrats who were the war party during the Vietnam war. Now, it is the Republican Party.
I am a great supporter of Pat Buchanan. I love his position on foreign policy and his many articles. This is from a recent article that he wrote. Pat Buchanan says:
It is astonishing that Republicans who threaten to impeach Obama for usurping authority at home remain silent as he prepares to usurp their war powers to march into Syria and back into Iraq. Are Republicans now prepared to sit mute as Obama takes us into two new Middle East wars on his own authority?
This is what Mr. McGovern and Ms. Lee and I are trying to say. It is time that this Congress start speaking out. We listen to the American people when it comes to war, and the American people are tired. They are worn out.
A recent survey actually said that 71 percent of American people said that the first intervention in Iraq was wrong. It was a mistake. It should never have happened, and yet that is why I admire you, Mr. McGovern, and Ms. Lee and the others who are willing to speak out on this.
Just a couple of other points I want to make--people always say those who wrote the Constitution, they maybe really better understood more than we do, and yet they didn't have the sophistication that we have today in the wars that we fight, but that brings me to a letter from George Washington to James Monroe:
I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to meddle into the concerns of another, that everyone has the right to form and adopt whatever government they like best to live under themselves.
That is George Washington in 1796, in a letter to James Monroe. Again, I think about the fact that I, along with other Members of Congress, gave away my constitutional right to declare war when we gave to President Bush the authority to use military force.
That in itself is something, again, being repetitive for just a moment, I will always, always regret.
Another quote, this one by James Madison, and this is Mr. McGovern's point:
The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.
We are the legislature. It is our responsibility to meet our constitutional duties. Mr. McGovern, I have signed over 11,000 letters to families and extended families in this country since we went into Iraq because I have asked God to forgive me for listening to the misinformation and the distortions by the previous administration to go into Iraq.
That is my pain, and I will live with that pain.
I am on the floor with you today--and Ms. Lee who has already spoken--to say thank you for taking the lead in trying to force this Congress to have a debate.
I am not going to restate what Pat Buchanan has said, but I will say to my own side many times: Why do you sit idly by when you complain about Mr. Obama and spending, spending, and we have already spent $1.5 trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we are still spending money in Afghanistan?
We will for 10 more years because of a bilateral strategic agreement, but what we are trying to do today is to say that we are not going to make another mistake in Iraq.
That is why I am pleased to join with you today in this effort to make the American people aware that we do care. We want the American people to contact the Members of Congress and say join in this concurrent resolution, this privileged resolution, to bring a debate to the floor of the House.
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Mr. JONES. Mr. McGovern, thank you very much.
I want to pick up on a few things you said just a few minutes ago.
Iraq is in total chaos. It is kind of ironic. In 1983--I found a photograph of Donald Rumsfeld who was a special envoy sent by President Reagan to thank Hussein for what he had done to try to defend Iraq against the Iranians.
That brings me to where we are today and why this resolution that you have sponsored is so important. I have the former Commandant of the Marine Corps who, for the last 6 years, has been my adviser on Afghanistan, simply because I don't have the military background, and he is a very dear friend of mine.
I emailed him a week ago and asked him:
What do you think about all of these advisers going to Iraq, something you were just talking about?
He emailed me back and he said:
We should not put boots on the ground.
He further stated:
It is a Middle East issue that needs a Middle East solution, not more troops.
That is why, again, your resolution, and our resolution needs to be debated.
A couple of other points, very quickly--after I found out that I had been misled with the first war in Iraq, I contacted Lieutenant General Greg Newbold because he wrote an article for Time magazine. I want to read just a little bit of it very quickly.
General Greg Newbold was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 to 2002 and describes himself as ``a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq, an unnecessary war''--Mr. McGovern, unnecessary war.
He wrote an insightful editorial for Time in April 2006 titled, ``Why Iraq was a mistake.'' I want to share a paragraph from his article because it is so appropriate of what we are trying to do today and what we are trying to do with this resolution to force Congress to meet its constitutional responsibility about sending our young men and women to die.
In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem ``Won't Get Fooled Again.'' To us, its lyrics invoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it.
He further stated:
Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: The Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.
We were fooled to go into Iraq.
I am with you. I know Mr. Obama came out against the Iraq war--and I want to thank him for doing that--when he was a Senator, but you are right, it is not the administration we are talking about today. It is the role of Congress and our lack of fulfilling our constitutional duty.
One last point, very quickly--four weeks ago, I went to Walter Reed hospital. I was told that two marines from Camp Lejeune in my district had been severely wounded, so I went to Walter Reed hospital.
As I go into the area where they teach them how to walk without legs, on prosthesis--they teach them how to use the artificial limbs to pick up a spoon--I met three Army guys from Fort Bragg, which is not in my district, but in North Carolina. All three had lost one leg each, each one of them.
Then, Mr. McGovern, when I went over to meet the young marine from Camp Lejeune, 23 years of age, and he is on what they call an exercise mat about 3 feet off the floor--he has lost both legs and an arm. I never will forget his father's eyes.
They were the saddest eyes I have ever seen on a man in my life. I saw pain. I saw worry. Here is his son, both legs gone and one arm gone, 23 years of age.
The second marine that I saw from Camp Lejeune had lost both legs by stepping on a 40-pound IED in Afghanistan.
The more that we have troops in Iraq, the longer they stay, there will be someone killed or wounded before it is over.
That is why your resolution--that is why it is necessary for my party, the Republican Party, to stop being the war party and being the party that wants to defend the Constitution. My party needs to allow us to have this debate that you have introduced.
As I leave, I want to thank you for giving me a little bit of this time today. I want to thank you for your friendship. I want to thank you for what you do for America. I want to thank you for what you do for our military. I want to thank you for what you are trying to do for the House of Representatives to say we have an obligation.
No kid should ever die again if the Congress is not willing to follow the Constitution and demand a declaration of war and have that debate and that vote, so I thank you so much for giving me this time, and may God continue to bless our men and women in uniform.
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