Mr. KERRY. I probably will not use more time, but at least I am protected. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I listened carefully to the comments of my colleague, the Senator from Connecticut. I appreciate the frustration he expressed about what has gone on in the last hours here and the difficulty of presenting to the country a Senate that appears unable to make up its mind about what resolution we ought to vote on.
The fact is, the last 24 hours in the Senate have not been a profile in courage; they have been a profile in politics. Rather than protect the troops, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have decided to try to do what they can to protect the President. I think they have made an enormous mistake.
The fact is, if we voted on the Warner resolution, those who support the mission, the escalation--but the mission, as the Senator from Arizona said--have a chance to vote no, and those who believe the escalation is a mistake have an opportunity to vote yes. It just does not get any clearer than that.
No matter what happens with all this argument about the process of one resolution versus another resolution, the bottom line is that people who on Sunday shows and in hearings stand up and say they oppose the escalation were, yesterday, unwilling to allow the Senate to vote on that. They were unwilling to have a vote of conscience on the question of the direction of this war.
So rather than protect the troops, those troops who are about to be sent into a mission that, in fact, does not resolve the issue of Iraq--and perhaps even makes it far more dangerous, certainly more dangerous for those troops being asked to perform it--are not protected by the Senate, making its best effort here to try to make a vote that disagrees with the President.
The Senator from Arizona was down here a few minutes ago asking the question of the majority leader: If you do not support the troops' mission, then aren't you, by definition--if you vote as we would like to vote here--not supporting the troops? That is just an extraordinary leap of logic which has no basis whatsoever in real reasoning.
The Senator from Arizona himself has criticized the policies of this administration time and again--in fact, not enough. But time and again, he has said Mr. Rumsfeld was wrong or he did not have confidence in him or this and that. Was that a criticism of the troops? Was that not supporting the troops? I am absolutely confident the answer is no. I know, and we all know, the Senator from Arizona supports the troops, but he has been able to draw a distinction between criticizing the policy and support for the troops. I will tell you, the best way you support the troops, you support the troops by getting the policy right.
Right now, all over the Hill here in Washington, there are veterans of the Iraq war who are going around and talking to Congressmen and Senators and the public, advocating that this mission in Iraq ought to change,
that we ought to begin a process of terminating our involvement there. They have a very different view of their own service than that which is expressed by some on the other side of the aisle. The fact is, there is a growing sentiment among many of those being asked to do this very difficult job that the missions they are being sent on don't, in fact, always make sense.
I remember--and I know the Senator from Arizona remembers--what it is like to be a troop in a war. I remember being on a river in Vietnam when the Secretary of Defense was flying over us on one of his visits to take a look at what was going on. Every single one of us said to each other: Boy, wouldn't it be great if he came down here and talked to us and found out what we really think is going on. We would have loved the policy to change. The fact is that more and more of the veterans I have talked to who are returning from Iraq and some, regrettably, as Senator Dodd and I noticed a few days ago, whom we met over there who have not returned alive, are against what is happening and believe there is a better way to manage this war.
What we are trying to do is have a vote, albeit on a nonbinding resolution, a vote that expresses the view of the Senate with respect to this war. We have a moral obligation to make that statement in the Senate. It is our duty to have that vote. The soldiers in Iraq are performing their duty. Why aren't the Senators in the Senate performing theirs? Is it their duty to obstruct? Is it their duty to protect the President, to prevent a vote? Even though they go out publicly and talk about their opposition to the war, their opposition to the escalation, their belief that the direction is wrong, we are not supposed to vote in the Senate on the question of whether you support the troops or don't support the troops by sending an additional 21,000 troops over there. Now is the time for the Senate to register its opposition to the escalation.
If you pursue the logic of the other side of the aisle when they say: Well, we can't have a vote here, we shouldn't express anything, we shouldn't try to change anything, then we are complicit in the very process with which we disagree. If lives are lost subsequent to our unwillingness to stand up and vote, do we bear any responsibility for the loss of those lives? Do you go home and say to yourself at night, to your wife or your children: Do you know I did everything possible to try to stop what is happening? When you make the next phone call to a mother or father or wife in your State and express your sorrow for their loss in the next days ahead, will you also be able to say, with a clear conscience, that you did your best to try to prevent that loss, to set this war on its proper course? I don't think so. I don't think anybody, with a clear conscience, can say that.
I hate the fact that we are reduced to having a vote on something that isn't at this moment going to change the direction. But every step is incremental; every step is a building block. Every step helps to build the change of opinion we need to achieve in this country, where people will understand the way you best define patriotism and the way you best defend the interests of our troops on the ground in Iraq. Surely, we haven't reached a point in the Senate where you can't even have a debate on the most important life-and-death issue facing people in this country. What are we supposed to do? Pack up and go home and let the President continue to make a mistake? Are we supposed to be somehow satisfied that the President has earned the right and the new Secretary of Defense? Who knows yet; the decision is out. But the record of the last 5 years, 6 years is one of mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, one after the other, from the planning to the numbers of troops, to what you do afterwards, to how you preserve the peace, to what kind of politics we are going to pursue.
So we are doing what we can, within our limited power, with 60-vote restrictions, to register our disapproval to sending an additional number of troops, which has been told to the American people is 21,000 but which, in fact, is over 40,000 when you finish with the support troops who are necessary. These troops deserve a policy that is worthy of their sacrifice. No Senator that I know of is not committed to success. We would like to be successful. But what is the definition of success now?
We have heard month after month from Ambassador Khalilizad. General Casey, over 7 months ago, said this is the last 6 months for Iraq. They have a fundamental 6-month period within which they have to get their act together, and if they don't, serious problems.
That time came and passed. What happened? We hear another promise of the next few months. We have had months and even years now of these promises about how this is a moment of turning the corner. This is the critical moment for Iraq. This is the moment of the difference. Everybody has known for the whole last year or more that you have to resolve the oil revenues issue. As I stand on the floor tonight, the oil revenues issue is not resolved. They say they are making progress, they are getting closer, but it isn't resolved.
The fundamental question of federalism, the role between the Shia and the Sunni and a strong Baghdad and a strong central government is unresolved. That is a fundamental part of the struggle. Our troops, with their technology, with their great weapons, with their unbelievable willingness to sacrifice and their courage, they can't resolve that issue. Iraqi politicians have to resolve that issue. Right now, as we are debating or not debating this issue, Iraqi politicians are still jockeying for power at the expense of our young men and women. I object to that. I get angry that we have to have a private fundraising effort to put together a rehab for our soldiers--thank God for the people who did it--in order to take care of those who are going to be wounded. And our people are talking about patriotism and supporting the troops? We have lost all contact with what is reasonable or what is real in this effort.
It is unacceptable that any young American ought to be giving their life or going through the sacrifice for Iraqi politicians who refuse to compromise, for a legislature that refuses to even meet. Less than 50 percent of them can be convened, a Parliament that doesn't meet, that is the democracy we are supposedly fighting for--Shia and Sunni politicians who are jockeying amongst each other, creating their own militias, each of them playing for a future with a U.S. security blanket lying over it, preventing the full explosion of the kind of sectarian violence that would flow, if all were left to their own devices. That is the one thing our presence is doing. There is a stopgap. It does prevent absolute chaos, but it is creating a slow, cancerous, insidious kind of chaos that is building on itself.
A couple of days ago, the largest number of civilians were killed by a bomb, by one single suicide bomb. It gets worse by the day because the fundamental issues of difference between people who have always lived there and will live there after we are gone are not resolved.
If you stand back from this and look at it and ask, as any reasonable American would ask: What do you do to resolve this, what do you do to make a difference in Iraq, I don't think any American is going to come to the conclusion that a soldier with a gun is going to make that difference. General Casey has told us he doesn't believe it will make the difference. General Abizaid said he didn't think it would make a difference. The President has even said there is no military solution. So if there is indeed no military solution, my question to this administration is: Where is the robust diplomacy and the robust political jawboning, arm twisting that is necessary to get a solution? Where is it? It is invisible to the average American.
If we don't get serious about that diplomacy, if we don't have a summit that some of us have been calling for for 3 years, and that is ultimately the only way to resolve these differences, then our soldiers are being sacrificed and being asked to sacrifice each day without a reasonable policy that is guiding this war.
What are we left to do? Are we left to say that our colleagues can stop a vote? We are going to walk away, and we are not going to try to do what we can to change this or to stop it? I don't think so. That is not the Senate that I came to serve in or I think most of our colleagues came to serve in. This is a silly sort of process that is going back and forth.
If you are opposed to the escalation, you ought to have a right to vote on it. If you are for it, you will have the right to vote for it. Go register your vote and then go out to the country. The troops over there are tougher than anybody in this room. They understand what their mission is. And what we do, ultimately, barring the effort to either cut off the funds or force the President to do something with 60 votes that we don't yet have, is not going to change their dedication or their courage or their commitment to the specific mission. Because that is the kind of troops we have.
But while we are talking about the kind of troops we have, let me ask a question: Our troops, most of them, go through basic training. They go through a specialized school. They train with their brigade unit company for a while. Then they are sent over. Most of our troops are ready to go to battle, and some of them do, new recruits, within 7 months, 9 months. We are now at the 3-year mark, 4-year mark on training of 300,000 troops in Iraq. What I hear from the experts is the problem with them is not training. The problem is motivation. How much training do you think the terrorists get? How much training do you think the guys get who have those machineguns and go out? Where is their training camp? Where are their barracks? Where is their 9-week basic training or 12 weeks? Most of those people are out there in a matter of days and hours because they are motivated.
Right now in the streets of the West Bank and the streets of Lebanon and in the streets of Iraq, the guys we are struggling against are getting up earlier, staying up later, and they have more motivation. And the guys we are supporting and putting forth money and guns and all the technology and all the training in the world are not motivated. Many of them don't show up. So unless we deal with this issue of motivation, of people who are willing to die for their country and people who are willing to go out and put their lives on the line and a group of politicians who are willing to make the decisions necessary to resolve this, this is going to go on and on and on, and it is not going to end well.
Everybody knows what the public assessment is on the latest NIE. People are learning privately what it is. The fact is, these are difficult times over there. This is not getting better. It is getting worse. Twenty-one thousand troops are not going to change that. An escalation is not going to change that. More troops on the ground raises the stakes. More troops on the ground provides more targets. More troops on the ground raises the stakes in a way that says, because we heard it from the administration: Boy, this is kind of our last-ditch stand. And if we don't make this work, we don't know what is going to happen. What a wonderful message to send to the other side.
We are being accused of sending bad messages. If you raise the stakes like that but create a mission and actually can't necessarily achieve it, you are preordaining the potential of even worse consequences because you will make the negotiation even harder. You will make it harder for the surrounding countries to say: This is sensible, we ought to get involved now. And you will make it harder for the people there to make the compromises necessary because they know that down the road is this confrontation with reality with an administration that has already said: We don't have a plan beyond this.
What a predicament. That just defies common sense. So we have made matters worse. We will raise the stakes, but we don't have a way to deal with it. A wing and a prayer. This is a ``Hail Mary'' pass by this administration, with no guarantee. I think our troops deserve some guarantees of an outcome.
The best guarantee I can think of is to redeploy them in a way that puts more emphasis on what the Iraqis need to do. It doesn't mean leaving Iraq completely. There are plenty of over-the-horizon strategies, such as in the desert deployments, a capacity to be there for emergency assistance, to tamp down chaos and go after al-Qaida, an ability to remain in a truly supportive training role without having our troops on the front line of a civil war. But those are not the ones they are putting on the table, and that is not what we hear them talk about.
We hear these two dramatic things: We have to go down this road where we have telegraphed our move and raise the stakes, and saying they are talking about complete withdrawal. No, they are not. Most are talking about how to achieve success in a responsible way which honors the sacrifice of our troops and meets the important national security needs of the United States of America.
The only way I know of to do that is to get to the diplomatic table; bring our neighbors into a new dynamic where they begin to have credibility; get Syria and others through the Arab League, the U.N, Perm 5, and begin a process of legitimate diplomacy, such as we have read about in the history books of our Nation for years. The great diplomats of our country are aghast at what we are doing now. Listen to any number of them privately, some who served in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President--Secretaries of State, such as Jim Baker. Jim Baker is a model in how to build a true coalition. It took him 15 trips to Syria before. On the 15th trip, he finally got President Assad to agree to support what we were engaged in. I am not sure the current Secretary of State has made 15 trips in the last 5 years. I cannot tell you the exact number, but I don't think it is 15 in the years she has been in office, let alone the prior Secretary of State.
Mr. President, we have to get serious about what we are going to do. The fact is, there are over 3,000 young Americans who have now died. I think four were reported in the newspapers yesterday. There will be more tomorrow and the next day. The fact that we are losing young Americans is not a reason to say we should leave. But it is a reason to say we should get the policy right. It is a reason to say we owe them a strategy that supports the sacrifice they are making. We ought to be able to do better than what we are doing now, Mr. President.
So this is really pretty simple. The Iraqi Study Group put forward some 79 recommendations. They have all been cast aside. This was a moment where the President could have brought Democrats to the table, all of us. We could have sat down and come together around, OK, let's put all these recommendations together. These will work, and we are willing to support these. Let's go out jointly and see if we can leverage the full power of the Senate and the Congress and the country behind the kind of strategy we need in the Middle East in order to protect these real interests, which range from Israel, to containing Iran, dealing with the protection of the gulf states, to Lebanon, the fledgling democracy, and obviously to stability in Iraq. We all understand that, not to mention oil and the economy and the other interests that we have. Those are real.
But I respectfully submit that the current policy we are on is recklessly putting those very interests at greater risk. And the measurement of that statement is in the fact that Iran is actually more powerful today as a consequence of what we are doing. Iran loves the fact that we are bogged down in Iraq because it makes it far more difficult for us to play a legitimate card in order to deal with their nuclear ambitions. There is nobody in the world who doubts that. Lebanon is more in jeopardy today, with Hezbollah and Nasrallah in greater positions of threat to the Government and the Prime Minister. Hamas has been in an ascendency in the last months, and we have been unable to move forward with a legitimate entity with which to be able to ultimately make peace. All these things are worse off today than a year ago, than 2 years ago, and worse off than 6 years ago.
If they are worse off, how do you stand there and say this is a good policy, that we ought to keep doing what we are doing, digging a deeper hole, and making it worse? I was over in the Middle East a month ago. I met with leaders of the region. I can tell you that while, yes, they say they don't want a precipitous departure and a crazy consequence of chaos as a result, they also do want the United States to play a sensible, constructive, and legitimate role in resolving the fundamental issues of the region.
So I think a lot of us have had enough of hearing these phony debates about who supports the troops. We all support the troops. This is the best trained military that many of us have ever seen. They are doing an amazing job under difficult circumstances. Again and again, I say that they deserve the support of a Congress that gets this policy right and that fights for them while they are over there and guarantees that when they come home, they don't have to fight for themselves to have the promises that were made to them kept. That is what this is about.
I think we can have a very simple vote. If you are for the escalation and you think it is the right policy, vote no against the resolution. If you are against the policy of escalation and you think it is the wrong policy and you want to be counted, then you ought to vote aye for the resolution. That is a vote we can have tonight, tomorrow, or any time. Most people here know where they stand, but they are unwilling to show the American people and unwilling to hold this President accountable. Shame on us.
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