As I posted a short time ago, Senator Wayne Allard “staged a deplorable, vile attack on John Kerry today on the Senate Floor.” It was a cowardly act, coming on the heels of John Kerry offering a new direction on Iraq that keeps faith with American troops and gives the Iraqis their best chance at democracy. Allard launched his attack on Senator Kerry and defended the Bush Administration’s aimless course in Iraq. John Kerry returned to the floor to defend himself and his Iraq plan with a scathing rebuke to Allard.

The Kerry plan, laid out today, sets two important deadlines for the Iraqis to form a unity government and redeploy American combat forces. Below is Sen. Kerry’s response to the Allard attacks:

Mr. President, a little while ago I was fought here. I was at a hearing of the finance committee. I am informed that the Senator from Colorado, Senator Allard, came to the floor to attack my position on Iraq, which is fine by me, but also I think somewhat questionably with respect to the rules and the etiquette of the Senate to attack me personally for my motives with respect to the position I have taken. And the Senator from Colorado suggested that — quote — “we’re seeing an individual who is being spun in the political winds.”

Well, let me make it clear to the Senator from Colorado and anybody who wants to debate Iraq, when it comes to issues of war and peace and of young Americans dying, nobody spins me period. And I’m not going to listen to the Senator from Colorado or anyone else questions my motives when young Americans are dying on a daily basis or losing their limbs because Iraqi politicians won’t form a government from an election that they held in December. That is just inexcusable; let me ask the Senator from Colorado, it is okay by him that young Americans are dying right now while politicians in Baghdad are frittering away the time and the opportunity that our soldiers fought to give them? Does he think that’s a plan that’s working? Does he think that’s serving the needs of the American military?

A year and a half ago, two years ago I suggested, as did many other people, that it would be inappropriate to set a timetable for American troops to withdraw because we hadn’t had election and because most people assumed what we were fighting then was al Qaeda and foreign terrorists. The fact is since then we’ve trained forces, we’ve trained police. We listen to this administration consistently come and tell us how great the training is, how many people are up and trained, how much they’ve been able to make progress, how 70% of the country is indeed peaceful. Well, if that’s true, then there shouldn’t be a great threat to reducing American forces on a schedule that is also tied to our ability to resolve the other issues with respect to Iraq. I’d ask the Senator from Colorado, let’s have a real debate about this issue. Does he ignore what our own generals tell us?

He says the president has a plan. Our generals tell us, General Casey, that the large presence of American forces, in fact, is adding to the occupation, the sense of occupation, and it delays the Iraqis standing up on their own. I’m listening to General Casey, not to the Senator from Colorado. If General Casey tells me that the Iraqis would stand up faster if there were less Americans there, I believe him. Our troops have done the job.

Don’t come to the floor of the United States Senate and try to suggest to me that somehow when we come up with a plan to protect our troops and to make America stronger that we’re somehow making their life more miserable. Ask the troops. 70% of the troops who were pulled — polled in Iraq said that they thought within the next year we ought to be able to withdraw. Those are our troops talking to us. The notion that we’re going to try to make this into one of those political squabbles lets have a real debate about the policy in Iraq.

Anybody who wants to come to the floor and pretend it’s working today is living in a fantasy land, and anybody who wants to suggest that our soldiers ought to be dying so a bunch of folks over there can squabble over issues that we haven’t even brought to the diplomatic table adequately has a false sense of protecting the troops means and of what their interests really are.

The fact is that they only respond to deadlines. Talk to people who have been in the region. It took a deadline to get them to have a transfer of the provisional government. It took a deadline to be able to get the elections in place. It took a deadline to be able to get the constitution in place. It took a deadline to be able to have the election that we held in December. And the fact is it ought to take a deadline now to tell them, don’t put our kids’ lives at stake and waste billions of dollars of American taxpayers. Get your government together. You owe that much to the American people. You owe that much to yourselves. You owe that much to the Iraqis. You owe that much to the world, which is waiting for leadership, for some kind of adult behavior.

I don’t think the American people believe what the Senator from Colorado said – that they believe there is a good plan in place. Everything we’ve been told about Iraq has turned out to be false, from almost day one. This is the third war we’re fighting in Iraq in as many years. The first war, I might remind Americans, was the war to get Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction. Then when there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, it became regime change.

If the president of the United States had come to the United States congress and said, I want authorization to go to Iraq for regime change, he wouldn’t have received it. And then after it was regime change, it transformed into, oh, we got to fight them over here rather than fight them over there, fight them over there rather than here in the united states of America. Well, that sounded good for awhile. Because people, all of us want the fight al Qaeda and want to fight terrorists. Lo and behold we found there really were only, according to most of the estimates, 700 to 1,000 or so hard-core jihadists from other countries over there. And the insurgency grew day by day to be an insurgency that is now a low-grade civil war. Prime Minister Allawi called it a civil war. Does the Senator from Colorado believe he knows better than Prime Minister Allawi what to call it?

The fact is it’s now a civil war, and our troops can’t resolve a civil war. No matter how valiant, and they have been, and no matter how courageous, and they have been, and no matter how skilled and they have been. This is the best military I’ve ever seen. These are the best young men and women I’ve ever met, and it’s been my privilege to go to Iraq and meet them. And they are making progress in certain areas, but their progress is set back by the unwillingness of Iraqis to pick up the baton of democracy. You have to compromise. And the whole reason they think they can sit there and not compromise is because the president’s policy is just stay the course, stay the course, stay the course.

We have an occasional visit by the secretary state or somebody to suggest they ought to do more. Ambassador Khalilzad is — ambassador call Khalilzad is a terrific person, skilled. He’s doing a terrific job, but he can’t do this alone. So I believe we ought to have a real debate about policy, a policy where they told us it would cost $20 billion to $30 billion. Remember that, colleagues?

Remember Mr. Wolfowitz in front of the committees telling us, oh, the Iraqi oil’s going to pay for the war. Remember them telling us that the soldiers were going to be received like conquering heroes with flowers all across Iraq? And then when looting broke out, remember Mr. Rumsfeld standing and saying that Washington is safer than Baghdad and looting happens? Remember how they didn’t even guard the ammo dumps and our kids started to get blown up with the ammo they could have guarded.

No planning was put in place. Anybody who wants to read about Iraq, go read the book “Cobra II,” and you can read an astounding story of negligence and malfeasance, misfeasance with respect to this war, companies over billing us, Halliburton, by billions of dollars. You want to run down the list of things that are egregious with respect to this war?

I tell you one thing I know well, and I’ll remind the Senator from Colorado, half the names on the wall of that Vietnam Memorial, half the names on that wall became names of the dead after our leaders knew our policy wouldn’t work. Well, our policy isn’t working today, and I’m not going to be a United States Senator who adds to the next wall wherever it may be put that honors those who served in Iraq so that once again people point to a bunch of names that are added after we knew something was wrong. We have a bigger responsibility than that.

Absence of legitimate diplomacy in this is absolutely astounding to me. You know, when you look at what former Secretary Henry Kissinger did night after night, day after day, back and forth in an airplane, struggling to be able to get people to come to agreement around the table. You look at what former Secretary Jim Baker did, traveling all over the world, working with countries, pulling people together around the idea. I don’t even see deputy assistant secretaries, other people out there at a level working other countries to try to a resolution for this, and there are Sunni neighbors all around who could all play a more significant role. The Arab league could play a more significant role. The United Nations could play a more significant role.

What are we doing? Just drifting day after day after day. We want to go back and talk about the armor that our troops didn’t have? We want to talk about the humvees that weren’t armored. How many kids have lost their arms or legs because of the lack of adequacy of the equipment that they were given? How many parents had to go out and buy armor for their kids? Because it wasn’t provided for.

I have never in my life seen a war managed like this one where there has been zero accountability at the highest levels of civilian leadership and people have been able to make mistake after mistake after mistake, and people want to come to the floor and defend it as somehow justifiable. We have a plan and we’re on course. We’re not on course. We’re on the wrong course. And the plan needs to be changed. Somebody ought to tell the Iraqi leadership that American citizens are not going to put their money and the treasure of their young into a kind of, you know, non-effort to compromise and show statesmanship and leadership that puts a government together. We put that government together, and then we talk about how we’re going to move forward. Right now this is adrift. It’s a policy without leadership. And the American people understand that. What we need now is civilian will and high pressure that is equal to the sacrifice of our soldiers.

I yield the floor.

Watch it here.

In the News: Allard, Kerry spar over Iraq

Filed under: In The News, Iraq, John Kerry, Politics, Republicans, Senate | Get Permalink or trackback |