Supplemental Appropriations

Floor Speech

SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS -- (Senate - May 21, 2008)

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I wish to focus my remaining remarks on the supplemental appropriations bill which is pending before the Senate. We passed a supplemental appropriations bill out of the Appropriations Committee, which I serve on, last week. This bill contains $168.9 billion for funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is the amount the President requested. But importantly, this bill also includes significant contributions to the domestic economy of this country, to the needs here at home, not just overseas.

It includes funds for LIHEAP. At a time when oil is topping $130 a barrel, the drain on low-income Americans and seniors particularly, simply to pay heating prices, and in the Southwest and South of our country, cooling prices this summer are extraordinary. It is a burden. It is a huge burden. We have incorporated some funds for that situation.

We also have moneys for unemployment insurance, not only necessary to sustain families in a time of economic crisis but also one of the most effective stimulus devices. The money from unemployment insurance goes quickly from the recipient to the local market, to all the needs of a family struggling in this economy to get by. It is a tremendous way to stimulate our economy. So it has both individual benefits and economic benefits for the country as a whole.

I must also point out that included in these domestic provisions is extraordinary legislation by Senator Webb, my colleague from Virginia, the enhanced GI bill of rights. Senator Webb has done an extraordinary job, and it is not surprising. He approaches this not only as a very astute legislator but as a combat marine veteran of Vietnam. He has borne the burden of battle. He understands now, in the famous words of President Lincoln, that it is our responsibility to take care of those who have borne the burden of battle.

This responsibility is, I think, one of the most paramount we face, and his legislation goes right to the concerns of so many returning veterans: How will I get back to education? How will I fund my education? How will I be similar to my predecessors, the generation of my father--when so many had the opportunity to go to college, and then not only did they contribute to their own family's well-being, they helped build an economic powerhouse we have seen in America since World War II.

This is a program, again, which I think is extraordinarily important. I commend Senator Webb for his vision, for his persistence, and for his passion. I hope we include it in the final version of the supplemental appropriations bill.

As I mentioned before, we are putting funds in for LIHEAP. I offered an amendment to include $1 billion. It is so necessary. In places such as California, there are 1.7 million households behind in their utility bills. That is up 100,000 from last year, and last year was a difficult year for many. There are 650,000 households in Pennsylvania that are receiving shutoff warnings, a huge number of families who are facing the end of their utility service. In a very uncertain economy, it is difficult to reestablish that relationship going forward unless we help them.

We have seen a 162-percent increase in energy costs since 2000. It is extraordinary. There is no paycheck for working Americans that has gone up 162 percent, but their energy bills have. We have seen heating oil prices in the last year increase 35 percent. So this is something that is absolutely critical, just as unemployment insurance, just as so many aspects of this legislation.

There are also included provisions not requested by the President. There is some assistance for the global food crisis and for the terrible natural disasters in Myanmar and China.

We also include, as another aspect of the legislation, something that is absolutely, I believe, critical, and that is conditions on our policy with respect to Iraq, particularly. This Congress has, over my strenuous efforts otherwise, essentially given the President a blank check. He demands money, and he has been given money but without conditions. I think it is the responsibility of this Congress to impose reasonable conditions on the funding, to not only govern our operations but also to make it clear to the Iraqi Government that they are ultimately responsible for their own safety, their own future, their own stability, the future of the Iraqi nation and the Iraqi people. It is not something we can do for them. We have rendered extraordinary assistance to them, but the task is truly theirs, and they must seize that task.

These conditions, I think, are terribly important. One would, for example, ensure the readiness of our troops, who are being stretched to the limit, ensure they are ready when they are deployed. That is something I hope no one is arguing with.

Another provision directs the Government to negotiate cost sharing for fuel and troop training with the Iraqis. The Iraqi Government has accumulated upward of $10 billion or more because of the surging oil prices. Very little, if any, of those funds is being devoted to their own people or to the joint effort we have undertaken with them to stabilize the country. It is only fair that they should begin to pay their fair share, particularly since they are sitting on a significant amount of money resulting from high energy prices. That money should be devoted to stabilizing their country and helping their people, much more so than they are doing today.

Then there is another provision which is something Senator Levin and I have been stressing for many months now, and that is to begin a transition of the missions our military forces and diplomatic forces are performing in Iraq, particularly our military forces, instead of an open-ended mission, and we have seen this mission from the President's standpoint change dramatically.

As you will recall, the first mission was to find and destroy the weapons of mass destruction, a very difficult mission, since there were no weapons of mass destruction. Then there was the mission of creating a democratic oasis in the Persian Gulf, a very grandiose mission, more or less, and that mission, I think, has been discounted dramatically over the last several months by the President's own rhetoric. He has talked now about simply creating a country that will sustain itself and not threaten its neighbors.

We have to focus not on these globalized missions which are more
dogmatic and ideological, but on things the military should be doing for our protection in the context of redeploying forces out of Iraq. Those missions are, in my view, force protection--we have to ensure our forces are fully protected--counterterrorism, because we cannot surrender that mission anywhere in the world; we have to be able to seek out and destroy those terrorist cells that are plotting and planning against the United States and our allies; and third is to train the Iraqi security forces because we do have to provide a force that will stay behind, a force that will help stabilize that country.

The essence of the Levin-Reed amendment has been to move from the open-ended missions of today to these discrete missions and, in so doing, begin a deliberate, consistent disengagement of our forces and a reduction of our forces in Iraq. That is a policy that will, I think, work, and it is a policy that eventually, ultimately must be followed.

I think the reluctance of the administration to entertain any conditions whatsoever over the last several years has undermined, in the long run, our ability to influence the Government of Iraq and also to reassure the American public we are not into an open-ended, unlimited commitment, stretching years and decades and beyond, that our mission is discrete, that our mission in terms of military presence is coming down and will not reverse itself, and that we are doing all we can in that context to save lives in Iraq.

On 9/11, this country was struck by terrorists. The United States, this Senate, the Congress, the administration rallied together with unanimity and with purpose. We authorized and supported an attack against Afghanistan because that is where the perpetrators were lodged, that is where al-Qaida was headquartered. They were collaborating with the Taliban government. They were given safe haven there. The planning for so much of what went on, on that fateful day, originated from Afghanistan. That is where bin Laden, that is where the leadership of al-Qaida was. We struck there, and I must say in an extraordinarily successful operation--and credit and criticism must be given, and there is great credit in terms of the leadership of the administration, our military forces conducting a very sophisticated operation, an operation that used our advantages with precision weapons, used very effectively our special forces, and used collaborative efforts with forces on the ground in Afghanistan and also the collaboration and support, in many respects, of the international community.

But rather than consolidating our gains after that successful operation and pursuing al-Qaida in Pakistan, where the leadership fled, the administration turned immediately, almost immediately, to Iraq. And not out of any, I think, strategic need, but out of a dogmatic political, ideological need.

They thought Iraq would be a relatively easy target. They were speaking in those days, informally at least, about a very short operation, and that almost immediately Iraq would blossom as a source of democratic inspiration and market economics in that region. We know the history has not been that cheerful. And that diversion to Iraq, I believe, was a deeply flawed strategy. It was an attack on a country that did not represent an immediate threat to the United States, a point I made on the floor of this Senate as I opposed the resolution of 2002 to conduct those operations.

Because we were pursuing not a strategic necessity but an ideological obsession, it was not a mission that was well advised or well planned for. There was more hope than planning involved, more ideology than practical commonsense application of force to a threatening situation in the world. One of the unfortunate ironies of this is that as we have been obsessed and committed in Iraq, al-Qaida has reconstituted itself as an incredible force once again. The whole purpose of our attack in Afghanistan, the whole thrust of our efforts immediately after 9/11, was to decisively and, we hoped, irrevocably destroy al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is back. While we have been engaged in this hugely expensive mission--expensive not only in terms of resources but in terms of the lives of our soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, and also the wear and tear on our military forces--al-Qaida has been quietly rebuilding.

The other thing that has happened unwittingly is that Iran has become a much more credible threat to stability in the region; has become even more influential and powerful. In some respects, this is a direct result of our engagement in Iraq.

Also in that time period, we stood by as the North Koreans overthrew the agreed framework, seized the plutonium that was in the reactors around Yongbyan and took it away. Now we are trying desperately to put together another agreement with the North Koreans, but after years in which they not only tested longer range missiles but also detonated a nuclear device. They crossed a threshold that had never been crossed before, they detonated a nuclear device, and our reaction was, I think necessarily perhaps because of our engagement in Iraq, one of seeking, perhaps too late now, a diplomatic approach. But if you go back to 2000, we had a framework in place that looks very much like the framework they are working out today. We had the plutonium secured, North Korea had not tested a nuclear device, and there were hopes that with further active negotiations we could make additional progress. That, I think, too, is a cost of our engagement in Iraq.

It has also greatly diminished our standing in the international community. This is not just a nice thing to have. An essential attribute of national power is the respect, the esteem, the cooperation, the good wishes, the goodwill, and the political and diplomatic support of other nations, because in this world most of the great challenges cannot be met alone. That was contrary, I think, to the unilateralism that abounded in this administration; that if in fact we are going to do something significant, longstanding and sustainable, it requires a multinational approach and the foundation of that approach is the goodwill and good wishes of the people of the world. This administration has squandered much of that.

It also is contributing, and we can debate how much, to this faltering economy. Oil today is $130 a barrel. Some of that is attributable to the instability in the gulf region; the fact that Iraq has not been producing the same volume of oil consistently over the last several years that it did before the operation. This geopolitical uncertainty has contributed significantly to the price of oil and it is also, I think, contributing to the overall economic issue we are addressing here today, a very critical issue in the United States.

Another aspect of this policy is that we have stretched our military, our land forces, to the brink, if you will. They have seen significant deployments consistently time and time again and the toll is adding up on our military forces. We are now left, and the next administration is left, and this Congress and the American people, with dealing with the consequences of this flawed strategy. I believe we have to begin to recognize and realistically assess the political and military situation in Iraq. We have to begin to develop and implement achievable missions for our U.S. forces there and their civilian counterparts, and then we must turn our attention to restoring our economic prosperity and growth, and rebuilding our military, which has been significantly stretched and stressed by this operation.

We have to also reorganize our civilian resources to deal with the ongoing threats in the world. That is something this administration has yet to do effectively--to develop a complementary power of our State Department officials, our agriculture officials, and all those people who must be part of this approach to a kind of warfare that is, in many cases, less about firepower and more about reaching people with economic progress and educational reform, and water systems. Those are more potent weapons sometimes than any precision-guided missile we might deploy.

I think our first step in all of this is passing this supplemental appropriations bill, with conditioned funding for our forces, with reasonable conditions about the mission and the responsibilities the Iraqi Government should have, and also once again beginning to invest in the American people, investing in keeping them warm in the winter through LIHEAP and keeping them cool through LIHEAP in the summertime; giving them a chance, if they lose
their job, to at least keep looking for some support with extended unemployment benefits, and so many other things we have included in this. I think that is critical.

Now, I mentioned before I have felt since 2002 that the strategy of the administration toward Iraq was flawed significantly. It was, I think, a product of a dogma. No one can I think dispute the power of democracy, and it is a power that is not exclusive to our culture. It is a human demand, the ability to live with a sense of personal integrity and personal freedom. But I think the administration didn't realize you need the institutional capacity to have a democratic government, and this capacity is not automatic nor is it built up in a matter of weeks or months. We have seen in Iraq, and in so many other places, that democratic elections do not necessarily lead to democratic political forces controlling a country; that you need to build carefully over, I would suggest, many years the institutional capacity so that elections lead to true democracy, not simply legitimizing those people who are antidemocratic.

I think this has been one of the tremendous flaws of the President's concept of the mission. As a result, we started off with, obviously, I think, an ill-conceived mission of eliminating weapons of mass destruction in a country in which it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction. People forget that the United Nations put inspectors on the ground, and that it was this administration who hastened their departure, rather than using these inspectors over time to establish whether there were weapons or whether there were no weapons, or at least to do it in a way in which subsequent military action would be legitimized by either noncooperation of the Iraqis or the fact that the questions couldn't be established or answered. But they quickly rushed to a military option, and I think that option has had unfortunate consequences for the United States.

One of the principal consequences, and I mentioned this in my introductory comments, is the fact that al-Qaida, the existential threat to this country, as evidenced by 9/11, has in fact reconstituted itself, not only in the border regions of Afghanistan, to a degree, but much more particularly in Pakistan, in the federally administered tribal areas. These are poor tribal areas ill governed by the Government of Pakistan. In fact, there are provisions in their organic laws which limit their real access to these areas. It has a population of 3 million people, and in that 3 million people al-Qaida, bin Laden, and al Zawahiri have found sanctuary and a safe haven, that continues today.

In a sobering report released last month by the Government Accountability Office, they stated:

The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe havens in Pakistan's FATA.

And this is 7 years after 9/11.

Since 2002, the U.S. has provided Pakistan with $10.5 billion in military, economic, and developmental aid. Half of it has gone to the military. But despite these actions--despite this extraordinary amount of money--GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State and embassy documents, as well as defense officials in Pakistan, that al-Qaida had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan's FATA.

Now, I thought the point of our national strategy after 9/11 was to destroy al-Qaida and to eliminate any possibility of a safe haven anywhere in the world. And according to these documents, our embassy, our Defense officials, our national intelligence agency, al-Qaida has reestablished itself and has found safe haven. I would suggest that is, I think, a stunning indictment of the strategy of this administration over the last several years; again, I think an unfortunate consequence of the obsession that they have chosen to pursue in Iraq.

An even more disturbing finding of GAO is:

No comprehensive plan comprised of diplomatic, economic, intelligence and military efforts for meeting U.S. National security goals in the FATA has been developed.

The one thing that seems to be consistent about the administration is they do not do much planning. There was no plan for Iraq and, according to the GAO, there is no plan for Pakistan and the federally administered tribal areas there.

A key part of the plan that must be developed in Pakistan is economic development. Because what I have witnessed, in the several times I have been to Pakistan, is that this is not strictly, as so many of these conflicts are, a military action. It requires providing economic support, it requires giving people a sense that their fate should be linked to their legitimate government, and that government should be pursuing goals which are not strictly sectarian. That government should be a government relatively open and democratic, and that the appeal of the extremist is weakened if people have that sense of confidence in their government, confidence in their future. That is not a military issue essentially; that is an issue of economic development, of supporting legitimate institutions of the state, be it Pakistan or elsewhere.

That has been recognized by, I think, many experts. But the senior U.S. Embassy officials in Pakistan admit there has been overreliance on the Pakistani military to achieve U.S. national security objectives; that we have not developed a complementary approach of a comprehensive strategy which includes economic, political, and social development also.

As a result, in March, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, described al-Qaida's safe haven as a ``clear and present danger to the United States.'' The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Michael Mullen, has stated:

If I were going to pick the next attack to hit the United States, it would come out of the FATA.

Now, let us be clear. It is not out of Iraq, it is not out of Mosul, or Basra, or Baghdad, it is out of the FATA. That is the view of the chief uniformed officer of the United States. The 2008 Director of National Intelligence annual threat assessment, which represents the combined judgments of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, has concluded that:

The resurgence of the FATA now poses a preeminent threat to the United States national security.

The problems of the FATA are being highlighted by deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan.

What we have seen from the initial success in Afghanistan has been a steady, at times rapid, deterioration of conditions there. It is evident that our efforts in Afghanistan are being undermined by what is happening in Pakistan. Not only have we taken our eye off the major threat, al-Qaida, and allowed it to reconstitute, we are in danger of seeing the progress we have made in Afghanistan slip away.

In 2003, the Taliban, the former government, and their followers, who have continued to try to assert their will in Afghanistan, were operating squad size units. Now we have reports they are operating in battalion size units of almost 400 people, showing the climate has changed radically. Suicide bombers have attacked at rates that were not observed in Afghanistan until relatively recently, but as you have no doubt surmised, it is something that has been imported through terrorist networks into Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's index of corruption is among the highest in the world. You have a state that has marginal capacity to govern well and wisely. Again, this is after many years of our involvement, our engagement. Also, there was a sense that, initially at least, before Iraq, Afghanistan was the major test of our ability, not only to defeat al-Qaida but also to create or help create, in collaboration with the Afghanis, a stable government. That test is in danger of failing miserably.

Afghanistan now provides 93 percent of the world's opium. One of the great additional ironies, now it is one of the major suppliers of drugs, and it is doing so while we maintain our military and diplomatic presence there.

We have a NATO contingent there, but frankly NATO has not been able to fulfill all of its obligations, putting more pressure on our military alliance forces. I think we have to urge NATO to be more helpful. Hopefully, they will. But, as a result, we have sent additional forces in there, about 4,300 troops. We are prepared to send more. This is adding additional stress and strain on our military forces.

As I look, we are seeing a situation in which the principal objective in response to 9/11, the principal place where our enemies were, has now been relegated to the third page of the paper, as the headlines are dominated by Iraq. I think we have a situation where we have literally taken our eye off the major existential threat.

We have another consequence of our operations in Iraq, and that is we have empowered Iran. Iran is heavily involved in Iraq. Its objectives are questionable. They have an interest in maintaining strategic depth by keeping the regime in Baghdad as one that is friendly to them, not hostile as the Baathists were. Also, they have many colleagues in the Iraqi Shia movement. Some of these individuals actually fought with the Iranians against the Iraqis in the 1980s in the Iraq-Iran war.

Iraq is materially assisting all the major Shia parties. They have not limited themselves to one party or one particular group. As we all know, in March of this year, President Ahmadinejad visited Iraq for 2 days. The present government in Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki and all, rolled out the red carpet--literally. He arrived in a motorcade and ran around Baghdad in a sport coat. When any of our colleagues go or when any of our major administrative officials go, it is surreptitiously, it is guarded, and it is in a flak jacket. So there is something going on there with respect to this Government of Iraq and Ahmadinejad and his warm welcome. I think it graphically shows the influence they have in that country.

We are finding a steady supply of IEDs which our military authorities trace to Iran, or at least their technology. Iran is heavily engaged in funding social organizations and building a model they have used elsewhere--Hezbolla in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian Authority--where they are able to not only help them organize the military force but help them carry out social functions, helping people, helping widows, providing relief. That is very powerful when you have a dysfunctional government and that is the case in Iraq.

We also know, on another track, the Iranians are attempting to develop a nuclear fuel cycle. The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Administration, has been spending decades trying to track the developmental work of the Iranian Government. In 2006 there were documents found of possible nuclear dimension to their program in Iran. This is of great consequence to us. There is a legitimate concern that if the Iranian Government were able to develop a nuclear fuel cycle and could produce nuclear material, they would not be able to resist the temptation to develop a nuclear device. That would be of significant consequence in the region and in the world.

All that is happening in the context of our energies and our attention being overwhelmingly devoted to Iraq. There is a connection between the growing geopolitical clout of Iran in the region and our situation within Iraq. In the long run, I think we might look back and discover that one of the real costs of Iraq was the emergence of a much more difficult, much more threatening, much more powerful Iran.

As I mentioned earlier, while we have been focused so strenuously on Iraq, North Korea has broken out of the Agreed Framework. They have expelled international inspectors. They have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They restarted their nuclear installation at Yongbyon. It is estimated that up to 50 kilograms of separated plutonium, enough for at least six nuclear weapons, have been taken by the North Koreans and dispersed somewhere in the country.

On October 9, 2006, the North Koreans conducted a nuclear test--crossed a red line they had never done before, detonated a nuclear device. Fortunately, over the last several months the administration has reinstituted serious negotiations with the North Koreans. Under the able leadership of Ambassador Christopher Hill, they have begun to identify and work with the North Koreans to identify where the plutonium might be, where there are other nuclear materials, nuclear technologies, and they are beginning to walk back where we were, ironically, in the year 2000 and provide some sense of a diplomatic solution to a very pressing problem.

But I would argue this would be a very different situation if we were not so decisively involved and engaged in Iraq.

I mentioned also, in the course of these last several years, our involvement in Iraq has hurt us in terms of the world's opinion. That is not just a nice thing to have, it is an essential thing to have. In late 2001, 52 percent of Turkish citizens and 75 percent of our British allies viewed the United States favorably. Now that favorable view has dropped to 9 percent in Turkey and 51 percent in Great Britain--one of our longest and most significant allies, Great Britain, and Turkey, one of the most significant members of NATO and also a Muslim country. We have seen our public approval drop precipitously.

In a poll conducted by the BBC just last month, 47 percent of citizens in 25 countries said the United States is playing a mainly negative role in the world. That type of public opinion will not inspire political leaders around the world to help us very much. In fact, to do so they have to consciously operate against their own public opinion. That is a difficult challenge anywhere.

Last month, Zogby and the University of Maryland surveyed citizens of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE and found 83 percent had an unfavorable view of the United States. These countries are moderate Arab countries, so to speak, whose support in this effort in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere is necessary. Their unfavorable view of the United States is alarming.

One of the keys we know of prevailing in this struggle is to challenge and rally the forces of moderation and democracy through the Arab world, of getting the people of the Arab world to understand that we are trying to assist them. That is not working, unfortunately.

Then, as I mentioned, we have the economic consequences of the war. In December 31, 2002, the New York Times reported:

The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials--then OMB Director-- Mitch Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said the administration was budgeting for both, and earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

To date we have approved $526 billion for operations in Iraq--far in excess of any of the estimates of the administration. That spending is affecting what we can do to help our own citizens, what we can do to play a positive role in the world--not in a military sense but in a diplomatic and international sense, helping in so many different areas.

Now, to gain some perspective on the $500-plus billion that we have committed to Iraq, what we could have used it for, this amount accrued plus the amount in the supplemental we are considering would have been sufficient to provide health insurance coverage to all the 45 million uninsured Americans for the timeframe 2003 to 2008. That is taken from the Joint Economic Committee. That would be a significant benefit to the people of America, but that is a benefit foregone. I have pointed out all this money to date has been deficit spending. This is not something we have paid for. One of the complaints we often hear around here is that it is irresponsible to spend money without somehow offsetting it. That line of thought does not persist with the administration when it comes to funding this war in Iraq.

We have also piled up huge contingency costs as we go forward. The direct costs are significant, but the indirect costs and the future costs are also important to note. We have to repair and replace the military equipment that is being used. We have spent money to increase recruitment and retention, and we have to do that for many years. We have had economic disruptions caused by deployment of the National Guard and Reserve troops who have to leave their jobs to go into the military.

According to a November 2007 report compiled by the Joint Economic Committee, the impact of the war on the U.S. economy to date is $1.3 trillion or $16,500 for every American family of four. So the costs, both direct and indirect, have been staggering.

Those costs continue. One of the critical costs we are going to face is the cost going forward of helping our veterans. I was very pleased last year to
act as the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans' Affairs while Senator Johnson recovered, and now I am equally pleased to know that he is chairing that subcommittee and doing a remarkable job. But we were able to pass a significant increase in spending for our veterans.

But the real challenge for us is will we do that 5 years from now? 7 years from now? 8 years from now? 20 years from now, when these veterans still need the help but time has passed? I hope we will. That would be a test--and if I am here, I hope I will be able to remind people that the test is each year not 1 year or 2 years.

As Professor Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, pointed out, this cost, when you aggregate it all, is in the trillions of dollars going forward, looking at the consequential costs today, looking at the direct spending.

That is taking its toll on the economy of this country.

Another place where the toll is being taken is on our Army and Marine Corps, particularly; our military in general, but particularly our Army and Marine Corps.

I recall, as so many of us do, years ago, August 3, 2000, to be precise when Governor Bush stated: Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called upon by the Commander in Chief today, two entire divisions of the Army will have to report ``Not ready for duty, sir.''.

Well, Army readiness is worse today than it was in 2000, and if that is the metric to measure the success of the Commander in Chief, I would argue that that metric has failed. If we look at readiness today, while we have a situation which our brigade combat teams that are deployed or are preparing to deploy are considered ready, the Army has only one ready brigade combat team in reserve for any other contingency in the world. Strategically our flexibility has been constrained almost to the vanishing point. That is a consequence of Iraq.

On February 26, the Army Chief of Staff, General Casey, said before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

The cumulative effects of the last 6 plus years at war have left our Army out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do properly, sustain our all-volunteer force, and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future.

He added:

We are consuming readiness as fast as we build it.

I would ask, rhetorically, I wonder if General Casey had to report how many divisions are not ready today, it would probably be more than two, if you aggregated all of the brigades, that for reasons of training, equipping, and personnel are not at 100 percent.

On April 8, General Cody, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on readiness:

I have been doing this for 6 years. As you know I was at G-3 of the Army and vice chief now for almost 4 years. And I have never seen our lack of strategic depth where it is today.

We have 162,400 troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. There are 33,000 troops in Afghanistan serving in the ISAF and Operation Enduring Freedom. Since 2002, 1.6 million troops have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and many of them are multiple tours. Of those on active duty, 336,000 have 1 tour; 108,000 have had 2 tours; and 30,000 have had 3 or more tours.

This is a pace that cannot be sustained. It is a pace that is taking a tremendous toll on our troops and their families, and it is a toll again that cannot be indefinitely sustained.

For our reservists, we have had many of those who have had at least 1 tour, 97,000; 9,000 have had 2 or more tours; and the notices that went out this week to mobilize and alert roughly 42,000 troops include significant Reserve and National Guard deployments, brigade combat teams in the National Guard that will go again. I suspect for many of them it will be at least their second tour and perhaps for some their third. So we have had tremendous turbulence in terms of deployment of our land forces. Our military personnel are dedicated. They are doing a superb job. But they cannot keep up this pace. That is one aspect of it, personnel.

The other aspect is equipment. We have fought tirelessly here in this Congress to give our forces the equipment they need. I can recall returning in 2003 from Iraq, seeing my National Guard military police people in Baghdad being told that they did not have armored humvees and they needed them because they were in the middle of a fight in Fallujah.

I contacted the military authorities. I came to the floor of the Senate, proposed we increase the funding for armored humvees, and that was an initiative that started with my colleagues here in the Senate and the House, reluctantly agreed to, I think, from my perspective, by the administration. It took us many months to begin to get sufficient armored vehicles into Iraq.

Similarly we are now on a second and third generation with MRAP, the mine resistant vehicles. That too was a result of many efforts here in the Congress to get that equipment out to our troops.

I believe, I hope, they have everything they need, the latest technology. That is something that is absolutely essential. But all of this equipment is being used and overused. Roughly 30 percent of the Marine Corps' ground equipment and half of the Army's ground equipment is in Iraq and Afghanistan, again leaving very little back here in the United States, relatively speaking, for the training and the contingency operations that might take place here in a natural disaster or some other major contingency.

It is a harsh, hard environment. The operational tempo is wearing out this equipment. I recall being out in Anbar Province getting ready to go on a Marine helicopter. They were briefing us routinely, claiming that the engines on these helicopters were operating way beyond where they would normally operate. They assured me it was safe to get on the helicopter. But one wondered, as you got on: Would this rate of operational use, if the stress and the strains eventually, would it result in malfunctions for our troops, our forces, our marines in the field.

So we expect, the Army expects, to need $12 to $13 billion per year to reset the forces. The Marine Corps estimates it will need $15.6 billion for reset over the next several years when the operations begin to wind down. The Army National Guard has little more than half of its required equipment and they will need $22 billion for the next 5 years to build the equipment up to 75 percent of authorized levels. So we have a tremendous impact on our Army because of our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and principally Iraq.

The other aspect of readiness is training. Because the time back home of Army forces has been reduced effectively to 12 months, they cannot do the same type and the same level of training they had been doing previous to Iraq. In fact, if you talked to most troops, they come back from Iraq, and then they start training, not for the range of missions our military force has to be prepared for but for their next deployment into either Iraq or Afghanistan. In that time they have to squeeze in time with their family, they have to squeeze in the administrative details that are part and parcel of being in home base.

Their training is being pressured. Some of the equipment they need to train is not there. It is already overseas and it remains over there. There is this increasing concern that the only mission they are training for is counter insurgency and urban combat, because Iraq dominates so much of the time, attention, and resources in the Army.

Another aspect of readiness is recruiting, and this high operational tempo has led the Army in some cases to miss their recruiting goals. Recently, they have been achieving those goals, but it is not without lowering standards, it is not without huge incentives or significant incentives. It is something that over the course of the next several months and years will show increasing strain and stress on the military force, their ability to recruit, their ability to retain.

In 2005 the Army missed its active-duty recruiting targets by 8 percent. That was the first time they had ever missed recruiting targets since 1999, and by a margin not seen since 1979, in the early years of the volunteer Army. Since 2006 the Army has met its yearly recruiting goals, but only by taking some extraordinary measures. In 2007, more than 20 percent of the new Army recruits needed waivers; 57 percent for conduct, 36 percent for medical reasons, and 7 percent for substance abuse. There was a time prior to Iraq when the Army prided itself on approving very few waivers and was trying to drive the standards up, not lower the standards. Thus far in fiscal year 2008, only 82 percent of the recruits have high school diplomas. The longstanding goal of the Army is at least 90 percent. The maximum age for new recruits has been raised from 35 to 42. Now, all of these soldiers are doing their job. But we have to ensure, as we were doing before Iraq, that to the greatest extent possible we increase the quality of our forces. All of these reductions in standards will come with some cost as the Army continues to go forward.

There is another similar picture with respect to retention. The number of officers the Army needs grew by 8,000 as we increased the size of the Army, with 58 percent of this group in captains and majors. As the Army grows, they have to retain more and more of these captains and majors. While the overall officer loss rate for fiscal year 2007 equaled the 10-year average of 8.5 percent, this loss rate must drop to 5 percent in order to maintain this increased size of the Army at these critical positions of captains and majors.

What is happening is that the tempo of operations, the limited time with family, the cycling in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, is causing these very talented officers, captains, majors, senior noncommissioned officers, to decide that they, for personal reasons, have to leave the service. And this is depriving the military, not only today, but for many years, of the talent and the skill they need, which is a great factor in our military forces. We have got sophisticated equipment, but if we do not have the high quality officers, senior noncommissioned officers, in all of our services, then we will not be as effective as we must be. The cost over the long term is a loss of many talented young men and women who otherwise would be committed to a career in the military.

We are taking efforts to retain these people with bonuses. But more and more what I am hearing is that the financial incentives, the other incentives, are not compensating for the time away from home, for the treadmill in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the toll will mount despite these incentives.

There is another aspect too of what is happening, and that is something that has become the signature injury of these operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is, the increasing number of mental health issues arising within our forces. Post-deployment health reassessments which are administered to service members 90 to 120 days after returning from deployment indicate that 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of marines report psychological symptoms. The figure in the National Guard is 49 percent.

Of the 1.6 million military personnel who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, almost 800,000 who have left active service are now eligible for VA benefits, VA care. Of these almost 800,000 veterans, roughly 300,000, or 37 percent, have obtained VA health care since 2001. Of this roughly 300,000, 40 percent, have been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

That is a staggering total, a consequence of the stress, the strain, the types of combat situations, the types of weapons deployed against them. But that is a staggering figure. If that number is projected throughout all of those who have served, that is a huge number of active personnel and veterans who are suffering some type of mental consequence of their service in Iraq.

In January, Dr. William Winkenwerder, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, announced the Army's suicide rate in Iraq has been about a third higher than past rates for troops during peacetime, another very significant and very sobering statistic.

Anonymous postdeployment surveys show that 20 percent of married soldiers plan to separate or divorce in 2006, another consequence of this operational tempo.

The incidence of alcohol-related instances has substantially increased over the last several years. The VA has identified that one in four homeless persons are veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is again another sobering statistic and a result of the operations that are being conducted and the requirements to deal effectively and principally with those veterans who are returning and those active-duty personnel who are returning.

We have encountered huge costs because of the failed strategy and incompetent execution of this operation in Iraq by the administration. We have seen over the last several months a surge that was promoted as giving the Iraqi Government the ability to reconcile itself, but that reconciliation has not yet been achieved.

We have seen, as I pointed out, that in Iraq today, probably the most influential country, certainly challenging us, is not a democratic country, but Iran, not a country that is committed as we are to the same democratic principles.

The Maliki government is a Shia government. It is operated in collaboration with the Kurds who have their own aspirations for autonomy.

The odd-group-out still remains the Sunni population. We have seen over the last several weeks operations in the south in Basra that started off inauspiciously and ended quickly with the help of Iran. We have seen operations now directed against the Sadr's militiamen in Sadr City, the JAM, the Mahdi army. This is rapidly becoming a fight not against international terrorism but a fight for power within Iraq among various factions and sectarian groups. We are being thrown into it day by day.

It also raises serious questions about, frankly, what we have done in the last several years to prepare for this day, to prepare not only the military forces in Iraq but the political institutions of Iraq to deal effectively and peacefully, we hope, with their citizens and to help develop a stable country that can stand on its own.

We are in a situation also where we have--and I think this was a calculated risk, one that was taken and is working, but the question is, How long it will work?--recognized Sunni militias. They are called the Sons of Iraq or Concerned Local Citizens. These groups are standing by at the moment watching as the Maliki government tries to assert its authority over JAM and some of the Shia extremist groups. But their future direction is uncertain. We are paying them. We have lobbied heavily that the Government of Iraq assume this responsibility. But there is a real question whether the Maliki government will ever truly recognize the 91,000 Sunni militiamen who are organized in the country, and there is the real potential that without this integration, this is another source of not only friction but of significant conflict in Iraq.

There are numerous scenarios that could play out. One scenario is, if Maliki is successful to a degree in disrupting the Shia militias and the JAM, he might decide it is now time to take care of the CLCs, the Sons of Iraq. This could prompt significant fighting. The other possibility is that the Sunni militias, the Sons of Iraq, the CLC, decide the moment is right for them to reassert themselves as a much more powerful force in the political life of Iraq. None of this is certain. But with each passing day, we are further away from weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism and al-Qaida. We are closer and closer to a struggle between contending Iraqi forces for the power to run their country. That is a struggle they must resolve. We cannot. It is a struggle that indicates, again, that our course must be to change our policy, to assist legitimate forces to train to go after whatever remnants of terrorism exist in the country and any place else in the world, and to at all times protect our forces.

Embedded in the supplemental is that policy decision which I hope we make positively. If we can begin our redeployment, successfully and without deviation, from Iraq, then we can begin to focus on what to me are much more critical and central issues--al-Qaida elements in Pakistan, the stability of the Government of Pakistan, renewed support for the Government in Afghanistan, and the successful effort to not only defeat the remnants of the Taliban but to do what we have not been able to yet, which is to create political institutions that will outlast us, that will be committed to a fair view of democracy and a fair view of the treatment of their own people. The economic infrastructure to support such a government, not through opium but through legitimate commercial transaction, that, too, is a difficult task. And then, too, I think we can focus and must focus our attention on Iran, dealing with their nuclear aspirations and also recognizing that ultimately our success in the region of the Persian Gulf depends upon diplomatic efforts involving all countries in a positive way.

This is a tall order. It is a consequence of a misinformed strategy and failed implementation. I hope we can begin with this supplemental to change course, to move forward. I urge my colleagues to consider this supplemental, consider the fact that we have to change direction in Iraq and redirect resources here in the United States. I hope in that spirit we can pass this supplemental and move forward.

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

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