Repeal the 2002 Iraq AUMF

Floor Speech

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to end the war in Iraq. That is right, it is still going on. The 2002 AUMF that authorized military force in the Iraq war is still active, but today we will be voting on it, and it is long past due for us to vote on it. The original text of the 2002 AUMF was disturbingly broad and authorizes the United States military to enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions.

We have wasted $750 million on the world's largest embassy in Iraq. When we get out of Iraq, it is time to put a for sale sign on that embassy. We may get only pennies on the dollar for that embassy, but that is better than sacrificing lives. We don't want another Libya; we don't want another Benghazi to happen in Iraq. It is time to scale down the embassy, put what is there for sale, and bring our troops and our diplomats home.

Saddam Hussein's regime was defeated in 2003. That is 18 years ago. Obama declared the Iraq war ended in 2011. But the AUMF was never repealed, and it gives a blank check to any current or subsequent administration to keep American soldiers in Iraq indefinitely and puts us at risk of getting into another war if things escalate.

By 2013, a majority of Americans believed that the Iraq war was a mistake. Approximately 4,586 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, lost their lives since the beginning of the war, and 32,000 have been seriously wounded or injured in Iraq since the start of the war.

Although it is hard to know the estimated number of civilian casualties during this period of time in Iraq, it is somewhere between 800,000 and 1.3 million civilians. Think about that. A million civilians have died in this conflict.

It is time for us to leave. We owe it to our soldiers. They signed up to protect our country. They didn't sign up to be the world's policemen.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this repeal of the 2002 Iraq AUMF today.

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