Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to share a letter that I will be sending to President Bush next week. I hope that all of my colleagues will join me in signing this important letter, because it is time for Congress to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home.

Here is the letter: Dear Mr. President. Despite 2\1/2\ years of warfare, including the deaths of over 2,000 soldiers and injuries to 15,000 others, Iraq remains as unstable as it was when you

declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003.

We need to face the fact that the situation in Iraq is not improving, nor will it improve as long as our troops remain there. Because the presence of over 160,000 soldiers in Iraq and on Iraqi soil is the main catalyst fueling Iraq's insurgency. The time is long overdue for the U.S. to change course in Iraq and bring our troops home.

To transition from war to peace, we recommend that your administration immediately make four pivotal policy changes in Iraq. First: engage in greater multilateral cooperation with our allies. Second: pursue diplomatic nonmilitary initiatives. Third: prepare for a robust post-conflict reconciliation process. And, fourth: withdraw the U.S. armed Forces. Multilateral cooperation.

The United States must engage the international community, including the U.N. and NATO, to establish a multinational interim security force for Iraq. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations, for example, is well suited for this task.

Diplomatic nonmilitary initiatives. The U.S. must pursue a diplomatic offensive, shifting its role from that of Iraq's military occupier to its reconstruction partner. This means giving Iraq back to the Iraqi people, working with them to rebuild their economic and physical infrastructure and creating Iraqi jobs.

The U.S. must also engage the United Nations to oversee Iraq's economic and humanitarian needs, renounce any desire to control Iraqi oil, and ensure that the United States does not maintain lasting military bases in Iraq.

Post-conflict reconciliation. Establish an international peace commission to oversee Iraq's post-war reconciliations. This group would include members of the global community who have experience in international peace-building and conflict resolution and would be tasked with coordinating peace talks between Iraq's various factions.

Withdrawal of the U.S. Armed Forces. The cost of the war in Iraq, both human and financial, has been staggering. Tragically, the American and Iraqi lives lost and the billions of dollars spent have failed to actually make our country safer from the threat of international terrorism. To end the war in Iraq, save lives, and prevent the U.S. from spiraling even further into debt, the U.S. must withdraw its Armed Forces now.

Mr. President, after Iraq holds it's December parliamentary elections, the country's leaders will be responsible for charting Iraq's course. The international community, including the United States, can then provide nonmilitaristic support to ensure the sufficiency of Iraq.

We look forward to your response to our recommendations, and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss them with you further. Mr. Speaker, I will send this letter to the President in the coming days. Not only is it long overdue from the Bush administration to end the war in Iraq; it is long overdue for this body, the Congress of America, to do our part in ending the war in Iraq.

I urge all of my colleagues to lend their signatures to this timely, important letter.

Mr. Chairman, today the House passed H.R. 4128, a bill that makes states and local governments ineligible for Federal economic development funds for 2 years if they exercise eminent domain in the name of economic development.

Protecting the rights of individual property owners is of the utmost importance. However, there are certain circumstances when the best interest of a town is served by the responsible use of eminent domain. As a former City Council Member, I know how effective this tool can be when it is used judiciously. In my State of California there are restrictions on local governments' use of eminent domain to ensure that situations like that of Kelo v. City of New London do not happen.

We have to trust local authorities to use this power responsibly and respectfully and only when it truly benefits the community at large and when property owners are fairly compensated. By restricting the use of eminent domain, we take away our local governments' ability to serve and improve their jurisdictions. As the leaders of our neighborhoods and towns, we must trust they know best how to use the resources and assets that are available.

Mr. Chairman, by restricting the use of eminent domain we have in fact impeded our local governments' ability to make necessary progress.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican's budget priorities are clear, and they are shameful. To provide $70 to $100 billion in new tax cuts for the powerful and the privileged, they are going after every single mother and their children in this country, every single mom and her kids.

Instead of these new tax cuts, we could provide an estimated 11.5 million Head Start slots for eligible children who cannot get into a Head Start program and health care for more than 52 million American children and families who receive marginal health care or none at all.

Another $500 million in Republican cuts will leave 250,000 children without quality child care.

They are even slashing funding for child support enforcement. $4.9 billion in Republican cuts will let deadbeat

dads off the hook to the tune of $7.9 billion over the next 5 years and $24 billion over the next 10 years.

This is the Republican reconciliation. Watch out everybody but the rich.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order out of order.

Mr. Speaker, Scooter Libby was arraigned this morning, and the Bush administration defenders continue to insist that the administration of the CIA leak was ``much ado about nothing.''

They say that the crime of perjury and obstruction of justice are mere technicalities, nothing to worry our heads over. Ha.

Let us leave aside the obvious hypocrisy. We all know that there was quite a hue and cry over perjury in this town 7 years ago when the President's party was on the outside of the White House looking in. Dare I say, the underlying issue at that time was just a little more frivolous than the matters of life, death and war that are at the heart of the current episode.

More importantly, of course, Scooter Libby's lies matter. Libby's lies are exactly what is keeping us from knowing the truth about the original crime, the outing of a covert CIA operative as part of a campaign to scare the Nation into a war based on the lie that Saddam Hussein was poised to use nuclear weapons on the United States.

Columnist E.J. Dionne makes the important and distressing point: the Scooter Libby cover-up was successful.

You see, 1 year and 1 day ago, the President was reelected by a narrow margin. Why does that matter? Because Libby is stonewalling. His tall tale about having learned about Valerie Plame's status from gossiping reporters was all about gumming up the investigation just long enough so that the clock would run out on the last campaign season. It was all about ensuring that Americans went to the polls last year with very limited knowledge of this scandal.

As we analyze the legal maneuvers and intrigue, as we try to read between the lines of Scooter Libby's bizarre letters to Judy Miller, let us not lose sight of the big picture. Right now, there are some 140,000 loyal, patriotic, courageous Americans who have been separated from their families and are prepared to die, all because the neo-con's cabal had it in for Saddam Hussein. Over 2,000 of their fellow soldiers have already made the ultimate sacrifice, and I have no doubt that those men and women would be alive today if not for the trumped-up intelligence and the campaign of deceit.

I had the privilege of talking with our soldiers when I was in Iraq a month ago, and you could not ask for a finer, more committed group of young people. I came away from those conversations full of pride but also profound sadness, because the men and women on the front lines have dutifully entrusted their lives to cynics and ideologues like Scooter Libby. They deserve so much better. They deserve civilian superiors who are at least as honorable as they are.

Even as we never forget the lies that got us into this war, I am even more concerned about how we are going to get out. There are ways to do this while still keeping Iraq secure, while helping build its democratic institutions and its economic infrastructure. I held a hearing earlier this fall where we discussed such ideas in detail.

We can appeal to the U.N. and to NATO to establish an interim security force in Iraq. We can launch a diplomatic offensive, helping establish an international peace commission that can coordinate peace talks between Iraq's various factions and oversee the post-war reconciliation process.

But the President does not want to be part of this conversation. All he has to offer is the same old rhetoric about staying the course and completing the mission. But how do you win a war against an enemy that grows more resilient with each passing day because your occupation appears to be occupiers of their land? One military commander put it best: He said that ``for every insurgent I kill, I create three more.''

Enough is enough, Mr. Speaker. The current Iraq policy is a bloody, destructive, dead end. We have paid way too high a price already. It is time to honor our troops. It is time to bring them home.

Mr. Speaker, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The resignation of Scooter Libby as the Vice President's chief of staff after receiving a five-count indictment was appropriate and welcome. But Mr. Libby's replacement, David Addington, is another long-time Cheney confidante who is part of the same secretive cabal of neoconservative ideologues, those who have deceived, fabricated, and added innuendo to march this country off to a bloody, destructive, and disastrous war.

Mr. Addington is mentioned in the Libby indictment, and there is convincing evidence that he was part of the campaign to discredit and damage anyone, including Ambassador Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson, who questioned the administration's misuse of intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion. So this is not exactly an administration house-cleaning. Instead of a badly needed culture change at the White House, what we are getting is business as usual.

One Washington lawyer who knows Mr. Addington well described him this way in the New York Times: He said, ``There are some people in the government who are diplomats and others in government who are warriors, and Addington certainly falls on the warrior side of that line.'' Great. Just what we need right now. Another arrogant, sharp-elbowed political dark artist.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, David Addington is pro-torture. David Addington is pro-torture. He makes the rest of the Bush administration look like an Amnesty International inspection team. More than a year ago, the Washington Post described Addington as ``a principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects'' and ``a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts.'' What a breath of fresh air, especially on the same day that we learned, courtesy of the Washington Post, that the CIA has been running a secret network of prison camps home to some of the most depraved interrogation techniques, often on detainees who do not have any useful intelligence to offer us. It is no wonder the Vice President's office has been trying to water down an anti-torture amendment, which passed the Senate 90 to 9, to allow an exemption for the CIA to continue cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.

David Addington, a man privileged to occupy a position of authority in our government, has used his post to advocate ferociously for a war in which he is asked to sacrifice nothing.

Compare him to a modest and ordinary citizen laid to rest earlier today, Rosa Parks, who took personal risks to correct an injustice and ensure that America lived up to her ideals.

And compare Mr. Addington's cynicism to the fresh idealism I saw firsthand when I visited our soldiers in Iraq a month ago. These young Americans are selfless and heroic beyond belief. Some of them do have personal misgivings about our Iraq policy, but they know it is not their job to question the

mission, just to execute it. And this they do, knowing they could lose life or limb. Men and women who wear the uniform are the very best America has to offer. It pains me to think that their fates actually rest in the hands of the likes of David Addington.

Our troops deserve better. They deserve civilian leaders as principled and patriotic as they are. What they deserve most of all is a change in policy, one that ends this war and returns them home to their families as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Out of Iraq Caucus, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), in bringing all of the voices together in the Congress, because we all have a lot to say. And we are all getting to the same conclusion, the conclusion that I reached a couple of years ago, actually. We do not need to be in Iraq. We are making a mistake. It is a faux war, and we need to bring our troops home now.

Mr. Speaker, I want to share a quote: ``Victory means exit strategy, and it is important for the President to explain to us what that exit strategy is.'' Those words were not spoken by a Member of Congress, not by a prominent opponent of the Iraq war. They were not even spoken by this President about this war.

Those words were spoken in April 1999 about President Clinton's military campaign in Kosovo, and they were spoken by a Republican Governor named George W. Bush. But what a difference 6\1/2\ years makes. It is precisely an exit strategy that is missing from our Iraq policy.

With over 2,000 of our citizens dead, $1 billion of tax dollars being spent in Iraq every week, the American people have a right to some answers to some important questions like, what exactly defines victory? What are the benchmarks of success? What is the long-term plan? What does the end game look like? These are the questions that my leader of the Iraq Caucus has been asking about tonight.

We are paying for this war in blood and money. My home district lost a 23-year-old soldier less than a month ago. Why does the President insult us with empty platitudes about staying the course and staying in Iraq as long as it takes?

Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of traveling to Iraq 1 month ago. I went with a few of my colleagues here in the House. The most rewarding, the most enlightening part of the trip was simply having dinner and talking with the enlisted men and women, particularly those from my district, California's 6th Congressional District. It is Marin and Sonoma counties just north of the Golden Gate Bridge across the bridge from San Francisco.

These troops are online over there, believe me. They know I am against this war. They knew I was. They looked me up before I got there. And they immediately asked me, and they had every right to, Congresswoman, why are you here? You are against this war. My answer was straight. My answer was true. And my answer they believed. Yes, indeed, I told them, I am against this war. I have been against this war from the very beginning.

But I want you to know that I support the troops. I have been working within this Congress to make sure that you have the equipment you need to make sure that you have the health care over there, the best you can have; and when you get home, that you will have the benefits that we have promised you.

But in all of that, I remain against this war because I want you to come home and I want you to be home with your families. I want you to be alive. I want you to be mentally whole, and I also want you to be physically whole.

Mr. Speaker, these young people are the very best America has to offer. They are brave. They are intelligent. They are loyal. They are loyal to their country, to their mission, and to each other. They are profoundly committed to this mission, even those who told me privately that they do not support the war or the policy that underlies it.

They are genuine heroes whose courage and resolve is greater than our accolades can begin to convey. We truly have the most capable military the world has ever known. So what is the problem? The problem is that we do not have leaders in Washington worthy of these fine soldiers. Our troops have been failed, failed by their civilian superiors who sent them to Iraq on false pretenses, on a poorly defined mission without all of the tools they needed, and without a plan to get them out of there. If the President will not lead to bring our troops home, then we will.

And that is what the Out of Iraq Caucus is all about. Last month we assembled a group of Middle East experts and military strategists to explore viable

and compassionate exit strategies because the American people deserve better than the poor planning that has characterized every single phase of this war.

The extraordinary men and women who I met in Iraq most certainly deserve better. They deserve leaders as courageous and honorable as they are in return for their unfailing loyalty. They deserve basic competence and integrity. I have some suggestions of what the President should be doing next in order to bring our troops home immediately.

Part of what he must do is eat crow. He has to apologize to the rest of the international world for going into Iraq in the first place and trying to bring them into the war with him.

He must become a diplomat instead of a warrior because the way he is doing it now is not working. He also must reach out to the global world. He must ask worldwide for assistance to help Iraq return their country to their people.

He also must work internationally with the United Nations, with NATO, with the experts who have been through this before in South Africa and in Ireland. He must work with them, help them, give them the room to help the Iraqis in their reconstruction and reconciliation. We do not know how to do it, obviously. We only know how to cause a war. We need to work now on how to end that war and how not to totally leave the Iraqi people in a quagmire.

But speaking of quagmires, that is what our President has us in. He has us in a corner. It is a lose-lose situation. Actually, if we stay in Iraq, our troops will continue to be killed and maimed and innocent Iraqi civilians will lose their homes and their lives and their families.

If we leave, indeed we will leave Iraq in a bad way. It will be a bloody mess until they can figure out how to get their country back together. But we can help them put it back together, not militarily, but with a non-militaristic presence. Why we are not doing that is beyond me. That is how we should have been doing it in the first place.

So what I would like to suggest is that our President, I do not want to suggest it, what I would like to demand is that the President of the United States put together a plan to bring our troops home and to bring them home immediately.

I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Congresswoman totally, and the American people know that you are right in what you said. This Congress, this Pentagon, this administration will eventually catch up to the American people who know that we should not be in Iraq in the first place and that our staying there will not solve any problems. We will lose more troops. They will come home maimed or dead, and we will injure more innocent Iraqis and destroy their communities and their neighborhoods and their lives; and when we leave, whatever is going to happen will happen anyway. In the meantime, our troops will be losing.

What I would like to ask is, if the President really believes that we are ending terrorism by being in Iraq, why in the world has he not found Osama bin Laden? Iraq was not an Islamic terrorist country until we went in, and now they are.

I asked the commanders directly, first, who is the enemy? The answer was more than once, as a matter of fact, the insurgents are fighting the very presence of the United States in Iraq because we do appear as occupiers. When I asked the question who are the insurgents, they are not coming from across the border. The great majority of the insurgents are indeed local. They want us gone because they see us as occupiers.

We are helping build local insurgents by our presence. Our presence needs to be there over time, but not in a militaristic way. Our presence needs to be to help the Iraqi people rebuild their infrastructure, their economic infrastructure and their physical infrastructure that we have so destroyed. If we want the end of terrorism, go after the guy that blew up our buildings in New York, go after Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Speaker, my last word is wake up, catch up with the American people. Bring our troops home if you support them.

Mr. Speaker, last year when it became clear that the United States was unprepared to fight an increasingly hostile and aggressive Iraqi insurgency, Secretary Rumsfeld told our troops: ``You have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.''

Well, I am here tonight to tell Secretary Rumsfeld and the other members of the Bush administration that

the war in Iraq was started by the government leaders we have, but not the government leaders we want.

Let us take a look at the folks who are running things at the White House. Who is weighing in on this war every single day? First, we have got Scooter Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff. Scooter Libby was in charge of coordinating the intelligence and communications strategy for the war in Iraq until last week. Last week, Libby was indicted by a Federal prosecutor for his role in outing undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Libby's precise role in this scandal is not yet clear, but it is suspected that he shopped Ms. Plame's identity to multiple reporters in an effort to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who opposed the invasion of Iraq and cited proof that the administration's claims of yellow cake in Niger were actually false.

This political assassination reveals the cold, calculated tactics used by the Bush administration in the buildup to the war. Obviously, the administration was so righteous in their cause that they would do anything to stop those who opposed them, including identifying an undercover CIA agent. Now a Federal investigation is getting to the heart of those callous prewar tactics. Unfortunately, if Scooter Libby is the sole administration official to be punished for the governmental failures that led to the war in Iraq, then he will become a scapegoat of historic proportions.

Libby's boss, Vice President Cheney, was no less involved in the planning that led to the war. According to reports, Mr. Cheney badgered and bullied low-level CIA analysts into misinterpreting evidence regarding Saddam's supposed nuclear weapons program. Also, we cannot overlook that Vice President Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, the company that has benefited from billions and billions of dollars of contracts in Iraq. How many bids did Halliburton have to place to get these massive construction contracts? Surprisingly, not a single one.

That brings us to former CIA Director George Tenet. As the CIA chief in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, George Tenet personally vetted much of the intelligence that was cited as evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction ``program.'' Today, we are certain that evidence was completely false. Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have a program that could create weapons of mass destruction.

So what did George Tenet receive for presiding over one of the monumental intelligence failures in modern history? Why, the Presidential Medal of Honor, of course.

Mr. Speaker, it seems that many of the administration have benefited personally and professionally from the war in Iraq, while the rank and file, our soldiers, have suffered a disproportionate share of the burden. You go to war with the Army you have? Well, I have been to Iraq and I have got news for the American people: the Army we have is pretty darn impressive. We ought to be proud of their commitment to America's security, and we ought to be appalled that their civilian superiors have not demonstrated an equal commitment to them. It is our country's highest leaders that we ought to be worried about.

The indictment of those involved in the prewar intelligence would be a start. After more than 2 years of war, over $200 billion spent, continued death and continued suffering, it is time to end this awful game of lies. It is time to end this corruption. Let us support our troops. Let us bring them home to their families where they belong.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. Speaker, the war in Iraq is like one of those bridges in Alaska. You can give it all the money in the world, but in the end it goes nowhere.

People all around the country are waking up to the fact that this war is not making the United States safer, like the President promised. It is actually jeopardizing our national security.

It is the very presence of nearly 150,000 American troops on Iraqi soil, appearing as occupiers, that galvanizes and unites the dissatisfied people in the Arab world.

The American people get this, people like Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq. Cindy has been calling on the President to bring the troops home for months now. Her mission is a righteous one, that of a grieving mother who simply wants to know what noble cause her son was killed for.

People in groups get it, like the members the northern California Ruth Group, who turned out in the hundreds to call for an end of the war last weekend. Over 500 people from my district joined me and fellow Members of Congress, Ms. Lee and Ms. Waters, and Cindy Sheehan at an important Ruth Group event to discuss ending the war. I have to tell you, discuss is a bit of an understatement. These folks are through discussing. They want our troops home. They want the war to be over.

Mr. Speaker, there are thousands of individuals like Cindy Sheehan and the members of the Ruth Group around the country, all calling on their government to quickly end the war in Iraq and bring our servicemen and women home. They join with 66 percent of

Americans who disapprove of the way President Bush has handled Iraq.

The point is that the American people are speaking out. They are speaking loudly about the U.S. role in Iraq. They are sick and tired of reading reports of more young soldiers being killed, leaving behind grieving widows and children and parents and friends and communities. They, like me, believe that more than 2,000 American soldiers killed is 2,000 too many. They think 2,000 soldiers, just think about it, 2,000 soldiers is an entire Army division gone. They know that for every insurgent killed, three more rise up to take their place.

They are tired of watching bombs go off in Iraqi cities, killing innocent civilians and American soldiers. They want to see the U.S. continue to support Iraq nonmilitaristically by assisting the Iraqi people build their war-torn economic and physical infrastructure. They want the United States to help in a nonmilitaristic role.

Members of Congress are actually joining this debate, too. There are no fewer than five Members of this House who have policy proposals to end the war, and 127 Members joined me in voting for the amendment I offered in May to this year's defense authorization bill expressing the sense of Congress that we need to end this war.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senators Kerry, Kennedy, Feingold and others have offered their plans for Iraq as well.

I held an informal hearing last month to address how the United States can achieve military disengagement. Thirty other Members of Congress joined me at this hearing, listening to military, academic and governmental experts discuss the best way to end this devastating war.

Clearly the majority of the country has started the conversation about these issues. It is necessary that the President join in. Mr. Speaker, individuals around the country have given us their plans to end the war. It is time for the President to give us his plan, the goal of which needs to be bringing the troops home to their families.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Dr. I. King Jordan upon his retirement as president of Gallaudet University on December 31, 2006. Dr. Jordan is an accomplished, respected leader and someone I consider a personal friend.

Dr. Jordan became the Nation's first deaf university president when appointed in 1988 and the first deaf president to preside over Gallaudet University. During his tenure there he has proven to be an able, caring leader propelling the university forward as well as becoming a strong advocate for deaf students on the Federal level.

Among his accomplishments, he led the university's first ever capital campaign, raising nearly $40 million, which supported the construction of the state-of-the-art Student Academic Center and contributed to the extraordinary increase in the university's endowment, which paved the way for an increase in scholarships and more academic programs. He also established a fellows program to provide support for deaf college graduates to complete their terminal degrees and become faculty members.

Dr. Jordan was not only a strong advocate for the Gallaudet community, but for individuals with disabilities across this Nation. Another proud accomplishment of Dr. Jordan's is the work he did to assist with the passage of

the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, in 1990. He was a lead witness in support of the ADA during a joint session of Congress and delivered significant testimony in Congress and across the country during the deliberations of this bill.

Before coming to Gallaudet Dr. Jordan's life was filled with many other accomplishments. A native of Glen Riddle, PA, a small town near Philadelphia, Dr. Jordan earned a B.A. in psychology from Gallaudet University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Psychology from the University of Tennessee.

Upon receiving his doctorate, Dr. Jordan joined the faculty of Gallaudet's Department of Psychology. Before his appointment as President, Dr. Jordan served as Chair of Gallaudet's Psychology Department and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He has been a research fellow at Donaldson's School for the Deaf in Edinburgh, Scotland, and an exchange scholar at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Dr. Jordan holds 11 honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards, among them: the Presidential Citizen's Medal, presented by Bill Clinton in 2001; the Washingtonian of the Year Award; the James L. Fisher Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, CASE; the Larry Stewart Award from the American Psychological Association and the Distinguished Leadership Award from the National Association for Community Leadership. President George H.W. Bush appointed Dr. Jordan vice chair of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, PCEPD, in 1990, and President Clinton reappointed Dr. Jordan to that role in 1993. In the summer of 2005, Dr. Jordan was presented the George Bush Medal for the Empowerment of People with Disabilities from President George H.W. Bush.

Mr. Speaker, I wish Dr. Jordan much happiness in his retirement as he looks forward to traveling with his wife Lynda and spending more time with his family. His compassion and service will be greatly missed. I am proud to have had a chance to work with him these past years.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim my time out of order.

Mr. Speaker, this morning we learned that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the United States Supreme Court. The stated reason had to do with executive privilege for legal advice she had given to the President that she did not want to reveal, but I do not think you need to be an expert tea leaf reader to see that public support for Ms. Miers' appointment, particularly among conservatives, was scarce, actually absent. As a result, Ms. Miers decided to step aside.

Perhaps there is a lesson here that we can apply to another initiative, an initiative of the White House that is rapidly losing public confidence. Two-and-a-half years into the Iraq War, it could not be clearer that the President's policy is one with tragic consequences. It is time for the President to admit his mistake and change his course. Over 2,000 of our brave soldiers are dead. That is 2,000 too many.

The threat of terrorism has not diminished at all. We have lost respect and credibility with allies around the world. The insurgency remains as strong as ever and is further animated with every day that the American occupation continues.

We are pouring about $1 billion a week into this fiasco, and, by the way, the original rationale for fighting this war, weapons of mass destruction, turns out to be based on fabrications and deceptions.

What is the President waiting for? How much worse does it need to get? How many more casualties must we endure?

Look, you do not have to take my word for it. The White House would like you to believe that opposition to the war exists on the fringes only, but the fact is that 66 percent of our people, two out of every three Americans, has a negative opinion of the way the President has handled Iraq. Apparently included in that two out of every three are former members of the administration and Bush family loyalists.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's Chief of Staff at the State Department, recently went public with his misgivings. He talks about a dysfunctional national security policymaking process, with decisions made secretively by a Cheney- Rumsfeld cabal that was given free rein by a President who, as Wilkerson put it, ``is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.''

The latest issue of The New Yorker magazine features a profile of Brent Scowcroft, a close friend and adviser to the President's father and mentor to Condoleezza Rice. Scowcroft was considered the hawk of the first President Bush's national security team, but in this article he is frank about his disillusionment with the current Iraq policy. He notes that you cannot impose democracy by force, that the Iraq War is breeding terrorism, and that Saddam did not represent a threat to the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to bring the troops home, and I feel even more strongly on this point after traveling to Iraq a few weeks ago.

There is no shortage of ideas for possible exit strategies. For example, there are at least four good proposals right here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Kerry and Senator Feingold have offered specific plans.

I held a hearing just last month where a broad range of experts discussed ways we could end the occupation while keeping Iraq secure and helping its people rebuild their country.

There is an important conversation going on about these issues. It would be nice if the President joined in, but to immediately insist that we stay the course is at this point irresponsible, insulting and demeaning to the American people.

I know this President does not like to admit his mistakes, but maybe it is time to eat a little crow. I think a little bruised pride is a small price to pay if it means more Americans will not have to die.

Mr. Speaker, let us return Iraq to the Iraqi people and our soldiers home to their families.

Madam Chairman, my district, the 6th District of California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is a ``donor'' district. We pay a lot more in taxes than we get back, in fact, the median home price is approaching $1 million. This is almost three times the national median home price, and my constituents want their taxes to work for them.

They want middle-class families in their area to be able to secure a GSE loan.

They want teachers, firefighters, and policemen who serve and live in areas of the country where the housing market is soaring, to be eligible for an GSE loan.

Madam Chairman, we can do that. We must preserve the section of the underlying bill that allows for raising conforming loan limits in high cost areas. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Garrett amendment and allow fair home mortgage lending.

Mr. Speaker, his name is Staff Sergeant George T. Alexander of Clanton, Alabama. He died on Saturday, 5 days after a bomb exploded near his vehicle about 60 miles north of Baghdad. He was the 2,000th brave American to give his life in the Iraq war.

My deepest sympathies go out to his family, who I hope finds some comfort in the knowledge that Sergeant George Alexander is remembered by all of us as a true national hero. We mourn the loss of Staff Sergeant Alexander just as we continue to mourn all 1,999 who came before him.

In my recent visit to Iraq, nothing made a greater impression on me than the intelligence, decency, and loyalty I saw in our soldiers. They really are the best our country has to offer. It pains me to think that any one of them could become casualty number 2,001; 2,002; 2,050; or 2,060. And it pains me that we clearly do not have civilian leaders worthy of our troops.

It pains me that these soldiers have been betrayed by their superiors who sent them to Iraq on false pretenses, on a poorly defined mission without all of the tools they needed and without a plan to bring them home.

2,000 deaths is 2,000 too many for this mission, a mission which was immorally conceived and has been incompetently managed. The devastating truth is that Americans are not safer because of this war. We are not defeating the insurgency; we are inspiring it. That is not the fault of the men and women wearing the uniform; it is just the nature of this conflict.

Every day that we occupy Iraq breeds more resentment, more vicious and violent anti-Americanism. As one military commander put it, for every insurgent killed, three more are created. How do we win such a war? And let us not forget that the very first casualty in this war was the truth.

The President waxes idealistic about spreading freedom. But we all know that if spreading freedom had been the stated rationale for war back in 2002, there is no way this body would have authorized the use of force.

No, this was about the world's most dangerous weapons in the hands of most dangerous people. Remember, it was about yellow cake and aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds and nuclear winters. They engaged in a campaign of fear based on a lie.

Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, a very expensive lie that has cost America 2,000 of its finest patriots. Their campaign of deceit was absolutely reprehensible. But I think we also have to look forward, as well back; to focus on not just how we got into Iraq, but how we are going to get out.

I held a hearing last month to explore in detail that very question. But the President meanwhile can offer nothing but the emptiest of platitudes: it is hard work. Stay the course. We will be there as long as we need to be there. Terrorism bad, freedom good. That is all well and good, but what is the plan?

He says he is confident of victory. But what exactly constitutes victory? What are the benckmarks of success? What is the plan? What does the end-game look like?

If the President will not lead, then I guess the rest of us will have to do it for him. There are three measures that we can take immediately: first, multilateral corporation. The Iraq campaign never was a global coalition. But now we can prevent further loss of life by bringing the U.S. Armed Forces home while simultaneously encouraging the United Nations and the NATO Alliance to establish a multinational interim security force for Iraq.

Second, diplomatic nonmilitary initiatives. The U.S. must lead a diplomatic offensive, making its presence in Iraq a humanitarian partnership, rather than a military occupation.

Third, post-conflict reconciliation. The U.S. should work with the U.N. to designate an international peace commission to oversee Iraq's postwar reconciliation. It is time for the President to admit his mistakes, eat a little crow and shift course.

It is time to return Iraq to the Iraqi people and the troops safely home to their families.