Kennedy on Troop Withdrawl Legislation

Statement

KENNEDY ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL LEGISLATION

(As Prepared for Delivery)

Mr. President, I oppose the minority leader's effort to provide yet another blank check to President Bush for his failed Iraq policy.

I will support legislation approved yesterday in the House of Representatives requiring the President to begin to bring our combat troops out of Iraq in one month and complete the withdrawal by December of next year. I hope the Senate will support it. And I hope President Bush will sign it into law.

Earlier this month, we reached another tragic milestone in Iraq. We've lost more Americans in Iraq this year than in any other year. It's another painful and somber reminder of the enormous price in precious lives the Iraq war continues to impose. It's long past time for the Administration to change course and end the national nightmare the Iraq war has become.

Our military has served nobly in Iraq and done everything we have asked them to do. But they are caught in a continuing 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 Iraqi out of its downward spiral.

Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq, spoke with clarity about the shortcomings of Iraq's political leaders. He said "The ministers, they don't get out…They don't know what the hell is going on on the ground."

Army Lt. Col. Mark Fetter said "It is painful, very painful" dealing with the obstructionism of Iraqi officials.

About conditions on the ground, Army Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero said, "… it's not as good as it's being reported now."

Yet, the President continues to promise that success is just around the corner. He continues to hold out hope that Iraq's leaders are willing and capable of making essential political compromises necessary for reconciliation.

The American people know we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a failed policy that is making America more vulnerable and putting our troops at greater risk.

The toll is devastating.

Nearly 4000 American troops have died.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured, and over four million more have been forced to flee their homes.

Nearly half a trillion dollars have been spent fighting this war.

It's wrong for Congress to write a blank check to the President for the war. It's obvious that President Bush wants to drag this process out month after month, so he can hand off his Iraqi policy to the next President.

It's time to put the brakes on this madness. It's up to us to halt the open-ended commitment of our troops that President Bush has been making year after year. We need to tell the Iraqis now that we intend to leave and leave soon. Only by doing so can we create 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's his responsibility to do all he can to end it. It's 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. Everyday this misguided war goes on, our servicemen and women and their families continue to shoulder the burden and pay the price.

If this issue were only about the tragedies of the war, that would be reason enough to end it. But it has become about so much more. Now we're also starting to see the fallout here at home as the President refuses to deliver the relief that our families need.

Earlier this week the President signed a Defense Appropriations Bill that includes a 10 percent increase in funding compared to last year. But he vetoed a bill that includes an increase half that big that would fund cancer research, investments in our schools, job training, and protections for our workers.

That bill included $4.5 billion more than the President proposed for education. He said that $4.5 billion more for students is too much. Yet he has asked for 35 times that much more for the war in Iraq. He wants us to say yes to $158 billion for Iraq while he says no to $4.5 billion for American children.

In Iraq, anything goes. The sky is the limit. Billions and billions and billions of dollars for Iraq. But here in America - right here at home - a modest investment in our school children gets a veto.

The bill included $3 billion to improve the quality of our teachers.

Those funds would have been used to hire 30,000 more teachers and reduce class sizes. They would be used for mentoring 100,000 beginning teachers and professional development for an additional 200,000 teachers. We could do all that for the cost of a single week in Iraq.

But the President says no.

The bill included $7 billion to provide high quality early education through Head Start.

Yesterday, the Senate approved a Head Start bill to strengthen the program and make Head Start even better. Those funds would be used to build a basic foundation for learning that will help low-income and minority children for the rest of their lives. We can do this for the cost of a little more than two weeks in Iraq.

But even as we work in Congress to improve this vital program, the President says no.

The same misguided rationale applies to the other investments in that bill. The President's choices cast aside urgently needed research on heart disease, diabetes, asthma, infectious disease, mental health, and many other areas that could find cures and bring relief for millions of our fellow citizens.

The President's choices are also devastating for American workers as he rejects funding to enforce the labor laws that keep workers safe and give them a level playing field. Instead, the President's veto takes bad employers off the hook and puts the safety and lives of American workers at risk.

The President's choices are devastating to veterans as well. Each year, nearly 320,000 brave service members return to civilian life, many coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tens of thousands of Reservists and National Guard members have lost their benefits and even their jobs because they served their country. That's why the Appropriations Bill provided $228 million to help veterans find jobs, obtain training, and protect their right to return to their former jobs. President Bush's choices take away this modest welcome mat and slam the door shut in our veterans' faces.

The bill approved in the House of Representatives also takes an important step in reining in the Bush Administration's use of torture. It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, Congress needs to legislate against the use of torture to prevent the President of the United States from abusing prisoners.

Torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment are already prohibited by law. Yet, must once again legislate - not because the conduct we would prohibit is somehow still lawful, but because the Bush Administration continues to twist and distort existing law in its misguided and immoral interrogation practices.

The nation was shocked by the horrible images from Abu Ghraib prison, and America was shamed in the eyes of the world. The Administration tried to whitewash the episode by blaming it on low-level soldiers, but the truth about our use of torture couldn't be concealed. Led by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Gonzales, the Administration had set a course that undermined fundamental American values in the craven belief that torture could somehow make us more secure.

Our interrogators were authorized to shackle prisoners in stress positions, induce hypothermia, and use sleep deprivation, extended isolation, bombardment with lights and loud music, and even the now infamous practice of waterboarding. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel gave its approval to the legally of these practices in the morally outrageous Bybee Torture Memorandum, which defined torture in an absurdly narrow way. Under the Bybee Memo, if the President approved the use of torture it, no one could be prosecuted for breaking our Nation's laws or international obligations.

The Administration withdrew the Bybee memo in embarrassment when it became public but the under Attorney General Gonzales the Justice Department continued to issue memorandums validating the use of extreme interrogation techniques. Indeed, now Attorney General, Michael Mukasey refused to denounce waterboarding as torture during his confirmation hearings.

Only leaders who fail to understand the founding principles of America could approve such behavior. Our country needs to stand beyond reproach for the sanctity of each individual, for freedom, for justice and for the rule of law. But the Administration turned its back on all of these traditions - and on the ideals of America itself.

In 2005, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which ensured that all interrogations conducted by the Department of Defense would comply with the Army Field Manual, a comprehensive and effective approach to interrogation that prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading techniques in favor of techniques that are most likely to be effective in gaining necessary information.

Lt. General John Kimmons said when releasing the Manual: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that." The Manual itself tells us that the "[u]se of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the [interrogator] wants to hear."

Last May, General Petraeus echoed these statements in a letter to all our service members in Iraq, saying that "torture and other expedient methods to obtain information" are not only illegal and immoral but also generally "neither useful nor necessary."

We now know, however, that the 2005 Act left open a loophole that undermines the basic safeguards against torture and cruel and degrading treatment. We applied the Field Manual to the Department of Defense, but not to the CIA.

Last year in the Military Commissions Act, Congress left it to the President to define by Executive Order the interrogation practices that would bind all government interrogators, including the CIA. The President's Executive Order drove a Mack truck through this small loophole. The vague terms of the Order permit many of the most heinous interrogation practices.

The provisions of this bill close that loophole. They require that all U.S. interrogations, including those conducted by the CIA, conform to the Army Field Manual. This very simple and easily implemented reform means no more waterboarding, no more use of dogs or other extreme practices prohibited by the Manual.

There will still be great flexibility in use of interrogation methods and our interrogators will be able to effectively get required information, but torture will be off the table.

This bill is an opportunity to restate our commitment to the ideals and security of our country. It's an opportunity to repair the damage done to our reputation by the scandal at Abu Ghraib and the abuses at Guantanamo. It's an opportunity to restore our nation as the beacon for human rights, fair treatment, and the rule of law. And it is an opportunity to protect our brave servicemen and women, both in and out of uniform, from similar tactics.

It's a simple but vital step in returning our nation to the rule of law and the ideals on which America was founded, and it deserves to be enacted into law as soon as possible.

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