America Is Not Safer Today

AMERICA IS NOT SAFER TODAY -- (House of Representatives - September 26, 2006)

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

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, America is not safer today than it was before 9/11. The President can continue to deny this fact in speeches around the country, but his own intelligence agencies concluded that the world is not safer today, and the main reason is the ongoing war in Iraq.

This is not the only proof that we are less safe today than 5 years ago. A recent independent Council on Global Terrorism report assigned a grade of D-plus to our Nation's efforts in combating Islamic extremism. The council concluded that ``there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.''

Another report, this one by Foreign Policy Magazine, surveyed our Nation's top security experts from across the political spectrum and their conclusions that 84 percent said we are losing the war on terrorism and 87 percent said the war in Iraq had a negative impact on the war on terror.

Mr. Speaker, it is time that we get back to fighting the real war on terror. We need to begin redeploying our troops out of Iraq and refocusing our efforts in Afghanistan. How can we defeat the terrorists if we have seven times as many troops in Iraq as we do in Afghanistan?

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