Message From the Senate

MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE -- (House of Representatives - June 15, 2006)

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Mr. LEWIS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Mr. Murtha, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to close this very grim and dark chapter in American history, a chapter that is leaving a dark stain on the moral fabric of our Nation and compromising our credibility among the communities nations.

As Gandhi once said: ``Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed with innocent red blood.''

Mr. Speaker, we have buried 2,500 of our Nation's mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. The lives of 18,000 men and women have been changed forever. Some have lost their arms, their legs, and their sight in this unnecessary conflict.

Mr. Speaker, war is messy. War is bloody. It tends not only to hide the truth, but to sacrifice the truth. While we may have won some military victories, those do not erase the mistake of a preemptive war.

They will not silence the questions that are troubling the minds of the American people. They know today that Iraq did not pose an immediate threat. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and they see that we are deeply involved in a misguided conflict.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply believe that the American people want us to bring our children home. We are not safer today than we were before we went to war. This war is not the answer, so we must find a way out of no way to bring our young men and our young women home. Bring them home.

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