Julia Carson – An Iraq War Funding Veto Guarantees Failure

Press Release

Julia Carson - An Iraq War Funding Veto Guarantees Failure

I have made public my rationale for supporting the so-called Iraq War Supplemental Funding bill, a bill that will emerge from the House-Senate conference with provisions that President Bush will find unpalatable - accountability and a deadline. In passing this legislation, Congress specifically funded every penny of the President's war request - $103 billion. The President vows to veto this legislation because it holds him accountable for results, specifically because it forces him to consider an exit strategy and sets a timeline and a date certain for withdrawal.

His veto action will starve the effort in Iraq of funding and guarantee that America will miss our Iraq objectives. If he accepts the funding he had asked for and if he meets specific benchmarks, we can achieve our objectives in Iraq. If we achieve the Iraq objectives, our job is complete and our troops should redeploy. If the President cannot achieve the Iraq objectives after more than four years of war, almost half a trillion dollars spent and over 3,200 American casualties, his Iraq plan has failed.

Initial Administration estimates of the costs of this war - in terms of lives, money and squandered global prestige - were fatally unrealistic. The intelligence was not a "slam dunk." The war did not pay for itself. We were not welcomed with "open arms." There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no exit strategy.

What price for an elective war in Iraq is too high when it distracts us from finding al-Qaeda leadership still hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan? The growth of terrorism in Iraq is what this Administration handed bin Laden through this war.

Yet the Administration and many Republican leaders proclaim that setting a performance timeline and a date certain for troop withdrawal is the wrong course of action. They ignore the huge human and monetary costs and the general lack of a troop withdrawal strategy coming from the President. They just continue to spin against the majority in Congress and against the will of the people.

But have these same key Republicans ever advocated for timelines and troop withdrawal?

Let's look at the facts.

Before fragmenting, Yugoslavia was host to terrible civil unrest and ethnic cleansing. A 3 ½ year civil war was ended in December 1995 by the signing of the Dayton accords. The U.S agreed to lead an international implementation force to assure compliance with those accords and with the Constitution that was adopted by the newly emergent nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our Commander-in-Chief then was Bill Clinton. U.S. involvement in securing those war-torn lands had lasted only 18 months, cost seven billion dollars, and had zero U.S. casualties - zero - when the Republicans demanded withdrawal.

In June 1997, Representatives Boehner, Blunt, Hastert and Hunter all voted for the Buyer Amendment, which established timelines, seriously limited funding for U.S. ground troops and mandated presidential reporting requirements on political and military conditions in Bosnia. Later, then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush said regarding U.S. involvement in Kosovo that, "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

It strikes me as strange that when time, costs and casualties were very low, when the mission was very clear and we when were achieving our mission goals, that my colleagues would advocate withdrawal. Now when the costs in time, funds and U.S. casualties are much, much higher, the Republican rubber-stamp guild advocates no accountability and no timeline. Accountability and planning will best support our troops - the President should accept this and sign the supplemental funding bill.

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