You can watch Senator Kerry's recent floor speech
here.
Excerpt:
We have had a lot of colleagues who have referenced the fact that the escalation of sending more troops into Iraq was to give Iraqi politicians the chance to be able to make up their own minds about their political future. And we have heard a lot of people talk again and again and again about how there is no military solution. I know what happens in the sort of ``speech-ifying'' that goes on here, and the repetition, I guess, of some of these facts. They kind of get glossy. They just sort of slide by people and people don't really focus on the real meaning or the impact of what is being said as a result. But the fact is, the President very clearly told America the rationale for sending more troops was not to go out and secure a whole bunch of communities for the sake of having a general come here and say we know how to secure a community.
A lot of us, in discussing the so-called surge, said at the time that this is not going to be the thing that changes the fundamental dynamics that are now ruling Iraq absent an increase in significant political diplomacy and political strategic thinking. And in that, we have been proven 100 percent correct. The Iraqis have not made fundamental decisions.
Let me ask you, Mr. President, what is the relationship between more security and making a decision about how you distribute oil revenues? Are you telling me they can't get into a room and figure out the Kurds have this much, the south has this much, the Sunni triangle doesn't have any? The Sunni are 20 percent of the population, so we have to have some revenue going to them from a national basis. Do you need security to make that decision? There is a complete disconnect in what is being talked about here.
Do you need security to decide whether you are going to allow people who were formerly members of the Baath Party, but who were there because they were coerced or because it was the only way to stay alive but who never took part in the excesses of Saddam Hussein, do you need security to make the decision--and I am not saying you can get them all to go into the mainstream of the life of Iraq--but to make the decision as to whether you are going to let them go in? You need security to do that? No. You need a political will.
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