Department of Defense Approprations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the Feingold-Reid amendment.

I strongly support our troops, but I strongly oppose the war.

Our military has served nobly in Iraq and done everything we have asked them to do. But they are now caught in a quagmire. They are policing a civil war and implementing a policy that is not worthy of their enormous sacrifice.

The best way to protect our troops and our national security is to put the Iraqis on notice that they need to take responsibility for their future, so that we can bring our troops back home to America.

As long as our military presence in Iraq is open-ended, Iraq's leaders are unlikely to make the essential compromises for a political solution.

The administration's misguided policy has put our troops in an untenable and unwinnable situation. They are being held hostage to Iraqi politics, in which sectarian leaders are unable or unwilling to make the difficult judgments needed to lift Iraq out of its downward spiral. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed policy that is making America more vulnerable and is putting our troops at greater risk.

Our policy in Iraq continues to exact a devastating toll. Nearly 4,000 American troops have died, and 30,000 have been injured. The toll on Iraqis is immense. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured, and more than 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes. Nearly a half trillion dollars has been spent fighting this war.

Now the President wants to use the supplemental spending bill to pour hundreds of billions of dollars more into the black hole that our policy in Iraq has become. It is wrong for Congress to continue to write a blank check to the President for the war. It is obvious that President Bush intends to drag this process out month after month, year after year, so that he can hand his Iraqi policy off to the next President.

It is time to put the brakes on this madness. We have to change our policy now. Until we do, our troops will continue shedding their blood in the streets of Baghdad other parts of Iraq, and our national security will remain at risk.

This amendment makes the change we so urgently need. It sets a clear timeline for the safe and orderly withdrawal of our troops, and it requires most of them to come home in 9 months.

It is up to us to halt the open-ended commitment of our troops that President Bush has been making year after year. The Iraqis need to take responsibility for their own future, resolve their political differences, and enable our troops to come home. We need to tell the Iraqis now that we intend to leave and leave soon. Only by doing so, can we add the urgency that is so clearly necessary for them to end their differences.

We can't allow the President to drag this process out any longer. This war is his responsibility, and it is his responsibility to do all he can to end it. It is wrong for him to pass the buck to his successor, when he knows that thousands more of the courageous members of our Armed Forces will be wounded or die because of it and when every day this misguided war goes on, our service men and women and their families continue to shoulder the burden and pay the price.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum

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