Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Ros- Lehtinen amendment. This amendment declares that Congress must not ``withdraw prematurely the U.S. Armed Forces from Iraq.''

Prematurely? How many more Americans have to die or be wounded before we recognize that bringing home our troops is not premature, but is actually long overdue?

Although I opposed this war from the very beginning, I also thought that because of the chaos that we had caused that once we were there, we needed to stay until Iraq was secure and the Iraqis' lives were back together. But I have come to realize that there can be no stability in Iraq while our troops are still there. It is our very presence appearing as occupiers and the resentment it is breeding that is responsible for the chaos and emboldened insurgency.

The Ros-Lehtinen amendment only serves to advance the Bush administration's current failed policies by keeping the United States military in Iraq indefinitely. This amendment would continue the unsuccessful military occupation. It would lay the groundwork for a constant and unending war.

Only by ending the occupation can we hope to quell the violence and give Iraq back to the Iraqis. We can secure Iraq by helping the Iraqi people, not through our military, but through international humanitarian efforts to rebuild their war torn economic and physical infrastructure.

It is time for a new direction and fresh thinking on this subject, not a continuation of the failed policies of the past 2 years. Instead of the same stagnant ideas repackaged, we need to end the military occupation of Iraq. We need to support our troops by bringing them home.

I will oppose this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, today I have introduced the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Commitments Act. It calls on the Bush administration to keep America's word, to live up to the agreements we have made to reduce our arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The Cold War has been over for about 15 years. I can accept, although I disagree, with the argument that an aggressive nuclear arms race might have been the right approach in a bipolar standoff between rival superpowers, but at a time when our greatest threat comes from stateless terrorists there are smarter ways to protect America.

Mr. Speaker, 33 years after the United States signed onto the Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, our government is actively seeking to undermine it. Last year, for example, the Bush administration sought $70 million for a new and completely unnecessary nuclear weapon, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, commonly known as the ``bunker buster.''

Mr. Speaker, the United States of America already possesses 10,000 nuclear weapons. We already spend $6 billion annually on nuclear weapon activities, activities which represent a substantial increase over Cold War era expenditures.

Do we really need to spend more money on weapons that will make the world more dangerous while ignoring other national security priorities, thumbing our nose at international law, and losing global credibility in the process? Why is it that this administration is enthusiastic about leading a global military coalition to occupy and invade a sovereign nation, but reluctant to show global leadership on important initiatives for peace?

The potential nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea are legitimate threats and we ought to be engaged diplomatically to keep these nations from developing a nuclear program, but what moral authority do we have to apply that kind of pressure if we will not agree to even a modest drawdown of our own nuclear weapons?

Now the administration has reached an agreement that will allow India greater access to nuclear technologies. This is a terrible policy. While India is not Iran or North Korea in terms of its threat to American security, we are talking about a nation that never signed the NPT, has a history of nuclear detonation, and whose border with Pakistan represents the world's most dangerous nuclear flashpoint. There has to be a smarter way, Madam Speaker, and there is.

I have proposed a new approach to national security. I call it SMART Security. SMART stands for Sensible Multilateral American Response to Terrorism. SMART calls on the United States to lead by example, to honor its treaties and meet its nonproliferation obligations. SMART would enhance and expand the cooperative threat reduction program which has led to the dismantling of nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union.

SMART has also held that military forces should be the last possible resort preventing war, not preemptive war. It calls on us to fight terrorism and weapons of proliferation with strong global alliances, improved intelligence capabilities and vigorous inspection regimes.

SMART includes an ambitious international development program to combat the poverty and hopelessness that give rise to terrorism in the first place, and it diverts resources from Cold War weapons systems to priorities like homeland security and energy independence, which are more relevant to current national security threats.

There is some irony in the administration's nonproliferation policy. Think about it. We have sacrificed nearly 2,000 American lives, thousands of our troops have been seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars to end an Iraqi nuclear threat that did not even exist. And as part of a misleading campaign to convince the Nation that there actually was an Iraqi nuclear threat, it appears government officials were even willing to compromise national security by blowing the cover of a CIA agent.

Meanwhile, genuine nuclear threats are going dangerously unaddressed, and our own government continues to pursue a large and expensive nuclear arsenal.

We need a SMART approach. We need a complete reassessment of our nonproliferation strategy and our national security priorities, something that will not happen overnight. In the meantime, however, I urge my colleagues to join me in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Commitment Act. At the very least, we can set an example by keeping the promises we have already made.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this restrictive rule because it ignores, actually blocks, the important issues and amendments that we should be talking about here and now, including my amendment ensuring that the United States lives up to its international commitment to reduce and eventually disarm its nuclear weapons stockpiles and my amendment expressing the need for a sensible, multilateral American response to terrorism, otherwise known as SMART security. But most important of all, this bill fails to include any Democratic amendments that address the war in Iraq.

This critical issue should not be neglected by a bill of this magnitude, a bill that addresses and authorizes our Nation's international programs over the next two fiscal years.

This authorization will not discuss an amendment that I would have offered calling on the President to develop a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq and to bring that plan to the Congress. It also covers our responsibility to assist Iraq, not through our military, but through international humanitarian efforts, to rebuild their war torn economic and physical infrastructure.

Would the Republican leadership believe that we can wait two more years to debate our role in Iraq, to debate when we will bring our troops home? We need to declare for the record that we plan to leave Iraq. Unfortunately, the rule before us today prevents us from having this very important debate. That is why I urge my colleagues to vote against this unfair and restrictive rule and to support every effort to plan to bring our troops home.

Mr. Speaker, today and tomorrow, we are debating the foreign relations authorization bill, a comprehensive piece of legislation dealing with matters that are important, even if they are not headline grabbers: passports, scholarships for international students, death benefits for American foreign service officers, just to name a few.

I intend to vote for this bill on final passage, Mr. Speaker, but not without some reservation and not without a great deal of disappointment.

Here we are essentially affirming American foreign policy for the next 2 years. And what does the bill have to say about Iraq, the greatest foreign policy challenge of our time? Virtually nothing. Three hundred-plus pages of legislative language and not a word about Iraq until the very end of the bill where it calls on the President to transmit a plan to provide for a stable and secure government of Iraq and an Iraqi military and police force that will allow the United States military presence in Iraq to be diminished. That is it. This is like writing an essay about the significance of December 25 and saying at the end, oh, by the way, it is Christmas too.

Some amendments have been offered that address aspects of the Iraq war. These amendments only serve to advance the current failed policy. Instead of giving us the new direction and the fresh thinking that we so badly need, this policy, these amendments continue what already exists.

I oppose, for example, one amendment mandating that we must turn over Iraq's security to the Iraqis only when they are ready for that responsibility and that we must not, and I quote, withdraw prematurely the U.S. Armed Forces from Iraq, unquote. Prematurely.

Mr. Speaker, do more than 2,000 Americans have to die, or 2,000 more Americans have to die before we recognize that bringing our troops home is not premature, but a fact that is long overdue?

This amendment also states that troop withdrawal cannot happen until we are close to realizing a free and stable Iraq that is at peace and not a threat to its neighbors. I fear, Mr. Speaker, that such a policy would make this an endless war because the amendment has it exactly backwards. There can be no stability in Iraq while our troops are still there. It is our very military presence and the resentment that it is breeding that is emboldening the insurgency. It is only by ending the occupation that we can hope to quell the violence and give the Iraqi people some hope for peace and security.

As I said, I will vote for H.R. 2601 because I believe there is plenty that is good and important in this bill. The architects of the legislation should be commended for authorizing billions in foreign aid that will go a long way toward improving lives around the globe.

But once again, and I repeat, this bill represents a missed opportunity to completely reexamine Iraq and foreign policy more generally. With this bill we could have charted a new course, launched a new and more peaceful strategy for helping Iraq stand on its own two feet. But all we have done on Iraq is declared it U.S. policy to extend our military presence indefinitely.

In Iraq, and around the world, I believe we need to adopt what I call a SMART security plan. SMART stands for sensible multilateral American response to terrorism. It would make military action not a reflex, but a very last resort. SMART would fight terrorism with brains, not brawn, with stronger multilateral alliances, improved intelligence capabilities and vigorous weapons inspections. It would forbid the sale and transfer of weapons to regions of conflict. The agreement reached yesterday with India most certainly would not meet the standards of

Madam Speaker, when the doctrine of preemptive war was first introduced, I suggested that it was unconscionable. Then the original case for war, weapons of mass destruction and a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, turned out to be erroneous at best and a pack of lies at the very worst.

So the war was immorally conceived. That is strike one. And deceptively marketed, that is strike two.

Strike three is the incompetence, the bungling, the repeated misjudgments in the execution of the war plan. From the dismantling of the Iraqi army to the lack of protective armor, to the failure to safeguard munitions and on and on.

The most recent proof of mismanagement appeared in a story in this weekend's Washington Post. Americans shooting at Americans in Iraq in the President's war that has become so mismanaged that I believe we are fighting ourselves. Have we become our own prisoners of war?

Now, finally, someone has begun to own up to the mistakes. Outgoing Pentagon official Douglas Feith in an interview with the Washington Post conceded that, among other things, we may have gone to Iraq with too light a force. The amazing part of that insiders' information and others like Mr. Feith's is that they have been cooking up the Iraq invasion since the early 1990s, more than a decade in the making. And they still could not get it right. It is inconceivable to me that we would send our troops into battle not only under-equipped but also undermanned.

One way the military has tried to keep troop levels down is by outsourcing many functions to private contractors. By some estimates, there are as many as 100,000 contractors roaming around Iraq. Many of them armed, apparently accountable to no one, acting independently of the military chain of command without any oversight, unbound by an official code of conduct.

Let us leave aside the issue of how contractors are paid much more than our troops or whose pockets are getting lined here. It has been documented that companies with close ties to the administration have been rewarded with these lucrative contracts, and the government has been, shall we say, very forgiving when their buddies overcharge and bilk American taxpayers.

But think about what it means to our troops on the ground to have well-healed contractors co-existing with underpaid active duty soldiers who are cogs in a rigid hierarchy, who are doing the unglamorous work, who are lucky if full health care benefits are awaiting them when they get home. The result is resentment, low morale, and a weakened military.

The only real solution is to bring our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible. I have been calling for an end to the occupation for many months now, and nothing has happened in Iraq that would force me to reconsider. Ending the war would be the beginning of a complete reassessment of U.S. national security policy. I have offered what I call SMART Security. That stands for Sensible, Multilateral, American Response to Terrorism.

At the heart of SMART is the belief that military action should be an absolute last resort, to be reluctantly pursued only after every channel has been exhausted.

SMART Security means fighting terrorism with strong diplomacy, robust multilateral alliances, and improved intelligence capabilities. It means being vigilant about nuclear proliferation and the spread of other weapons of mass destruction. It means more investment in homeland security and energy independence, and less in obsolete, Cold War weapons systems. And SMART Security is about attacking terrorism at its very roots with an ambitious, international development agenda that brings education, debt relief, democracy-building, and economic development to the impoverished nations of the world.

SMART is tough, pragmatic, and patriotic. It protects America by relying on the very best of American values: our commitment to freedom, our compassion for the people of the world, and our capacity for global leadership.

Mr. Speaker, there was nothing smart about a war plan that tried to cut corners by sending in too few soldiers. In fact, there is nothing smart at all about this war. Nearly 2,000 Americans dead, a recharged insurgency, political and economic chaos in Iraq, and no end in sight; an immoral war, a dishonest war and, now, even a senior Pentagon official, Douglas Feith, admits, a mismanaged war. That is strike three, they are out.

Mr. Speaker, 38 years ago, I was a single working mother with three small children. They were 1, 3 and 5 years old. I was receiving no child support, earning minimum wage. Even though I was employed, I was earning so little I needed welfare to provide my children with the child care, the health care, and the food that was necessary to keep us going. Even though I was educated, I had good job skills, I still was not earning enough to fully support my family. My story bears repeating because too many families today are in the absolute same predicament I was 38 years ago.

If this Congress is truly serious about reducing dependence on welfare, let us increase the minimum wage, let us pay working parents enough to support their families and take care of themselves. Otherwise, taxpayers who pay for welfare are subsidizing employers who do not pay a livable wage.

The minimum wage has not kept up with the increase in the cost of living. Workers these days can put in a full day, 40 hours a week at minimum wage and still live below the poverty level. The majority leadership in this Congress want to kick single moms and their families off welfare, and they want to cut $10 billion out of Medicaid to reduce health benefits for low-income families.

A minimum wage increase is also a matter of basic fairness for millions of working Americans. It is not as if businesses are not doing well. Private business productivity has and is increasing. Profits are up, but wages are stagnant. What is wrong with this picture? Is it not time to let American workers share in the fruits of their labor?

President Bush and his allies say they support traditional American family values. Well, let us return to the traditional family value of paying an honest wage for an honest day's work by raising the minimum wage. If they, the Republicans, believe their own rhetoric, they would have allowed this discussion as part of this bill.

Vote ``no'' so we can discuss minimum wage and an opportunity for everybody in the House to say their piece. Vote ``no'' for the four bills included under this rule.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 739 because it appears to be just another way for this administration to distract from the real priorities of our Nation's workers: fair wages, open labor negotiations, secure pensions, U.S. jobs over the outsourcing of our jobs and, of course, a safe working environment that protects workers from harm and allows their families peace of mind. Yet with this legislation, we put the company's bottom line above the safety of American workers.

With the narrowing definition of willful violations, we make it easier for employers to avoid responsibility after disregarding a safety standard requirement. This bill would allow a company to receive a filing extension no matter why the paperwork was lost, whether they lost track of it in the first place or if they even put it aside because of their very own negligence.

Why should any worker be forced to suffer in unhealthy or unsafe working conditions or, worse, lose their life or be maimed for their life because of inefficiencies within a company's system? That is why I support real workforce reform that strengthens worker protections and insists that employers face real consequences when their poor safety standards cause a wrongful death, no excuses, no added waivers, no way to help an employer miss their deadlines and then get away with it.

You cannot put a price tag on life, Madam Speaker, and you cannot put a price tag on serious injury. We can all agree that every worker's life is more precious than a profit. That is why I encourage my colleagues to join me and join the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) in opposing H.R. 739.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 740 because workers deserve to know that their interests will be heard without biased judgment by the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Grieving families across America depend on OSHA to stand up for them and for their deceased and injured loved ones. But this legislation will threaten one of the only hopes that families have for justice when a loved one is harmed at work.

By increasing the membership of the commission from three to five, the administration could actually play politics with the commission, filling it with antiworker safety appointees, making it more difficult to reach a quorum than now. The very idea that it is simpler to get a three-member quorum than a two-member quorum makes no sense. If you cannot fill a quorum when you only have three, how are you going to fill it when you have five?

Since President Bush took office, it has been really clear that he intends to use OSHA to protect employers rather than employees when addressing worker safety. Why then would we believe that he would appoint members to the commission that would steer the commission toward helping the employee rather than the employer?

Employees need to know that business interests are not the primary basis of the OSHA Review Commission. The size of the OSHA Review Commission has no meaning in the face of employee health and safety, in the face of death and injury. What does it matter to the worker the size of the business or how many members sit on a commission? Death is death. Injury is injury. That is what we should be talking about, protecting our workers.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is not what workers need or want. Their grievances must be taken more seriously than these little fixes here and there in the OSHA review. If you cannot sit three members, why could you sit five? Think about it. That is why I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 740.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 741. Instead of working to strengthen OSHA standards, my Republican colleagues have presented yet another piece of legislation aimed to weaken it by undermining the clout of the Secretary of Labor.

The Secretary of Labor should be the final authority on how OSHA law is interpreted, and this bill undermines the Secretary's authority . . . giving the Commission too much latitude.

The Secretary of Labor needs an unbiased group of peers during the appeals process. If the Commission's authority on the interpretation of OSHA law trumps the Secretary of Labor, what legal basis would the Secretary have to appeal a decision with which he/she disagrees?

The Commission's role is to fact-find and review while the Secretary of Labor is the enforcer. If the Commission becomes both the fact- finder and the enforcer, the employee cannot be ensured protection from bias. This legislation undermines the entire appeals process. It is unnecessary and not in the best interests of the employer or the employee.

If the administration was really interested in helping workers, it wouldn't be focusing on these unnecessary semantics in the law. But instead, it would be granting workers something they really need, like increased minimum wage or stricter penalties for employers that ignore safety regulations. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting real worker reforms, not legislation promoting the erosion of worker protections.

Mr. Speaker, the administration's priorities are wrong, and I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 741.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 742 because workers deserve to know their interests will be represented fairly by OSHA, not weighed by how much money it will cost to bring the claim forward.

We all have small businesses in our districts, and we all know that it saves money to provide for a safe workplace in the first place and preventing accidents.

Workers and their families suffer due to poor safety at some workplaces. They have enough angst because they can't count on their employers to provide protection. Experiencing further betrayal by their Government when they seek justice is the last thing they need.

But, this bill threatens the lives of thousands of workers employed by small businesses because it forces OSHA to consider the costs of attorneys' fees when deciding to take action. Putting this unique burden on OSHA may take away the only recourse employees have to stand up for their safety.

Since Bush took office, it has been clear that he intends to use OSHA to protect big business rather than worker safety. First, he signed legislation overturning workplace safety rules to prevent ergonomic standards.

Then he advocated budget cuts for job safety agencies, such as OSHA and NIOSH. He went even further by suspending twenty-three important job safety regulations. The list goes on and on. This legislation is one more way to weaken OSHA. If this passes it will be that much easier for businesses to avoid OSHA regulations.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle really wanted to help workers, they would increase penalties for employers that ignore safety regulations. They would protect companys from dumping their pensions on to the taxpayers and raise minimum wage. These actions would let our workers know that someone is worrying about the costs in their lives as well.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 742, which is an unnecessary attack on worker protections.

Mr. Speaker, back in my district this past weekend, I had an extraordinary meeting with a group of veterans, many of them from Alpha Company 579th Engineering Battalion who have recently returned from a tour in Iraq.

During their deployment, this National Guard unit of 88 mostly California soldiers lost 3 comrades; 23 were wounded in action. And they also received 26 Purple Hearts, eight Bronze Stars and one Meritorious Service Medal.

Saturday's town meeting was not about my position on the war or anybody else's. We were there to provide information about the services and benefits available to returning soldiers. We had the VA regional director as well as a local vice chairman from a group called Employment Support for the Guard and Reserve. One of our speakers was the National Managing Director of Helmet to Hardhats, an organization that helps place veterans in construction jobs. The administrator from the largest veterans home in the country in Yountville, California, was there. And we heard from a man who started a nonprofit called Welcome Home Heroes devoted simply to treating an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran to a night out with his or her family at a nice restaurant.

For so many soldiers, the return from the battlefield is just the beginning of their ordeal. There are those who have been wounded or mentally traumatized or both and must learn to cope with a life- altering condition. But even if you come home unscathed, the transition back to civilian life can be rough going. There are jobs to find, educations to complete and loans to pay off. There are cases in which service to the Nation has cost veterans their homes or their small businesses. Some may need family counseling to readjust to domestic life.

We cannot let them down. I was profoundly disappointed a few weeks ago when we learned that the Department of Veterans Affairs found itself a billion dollars short of what was necessary to cover veterans health expenses for the year 2005. But this body did the right thing by quickly passing a supplemental to help fill the gap before we left for the Fourth of July holiday, although the appropriations I believe could have been more generous.

How could we go home to celebrate the birth of American freedom if we were not doing our part to support our troops in the field today?

Every Member of the House who voted that day voted aye, voted for the bill which just goes to show, Mr. Speaker, that there is and there should be little partisanship when it comes to support for our veterans.

I do not know anyone on either side of the aisle in this Chamber who does not feel the utmost pride in the brave men and women who are on the front

line in Iraq. I do not know anyone who is not filled with gratitude for their sacrifice. Where I part with many of my colleagues is in my belief that the best way to support the troops is to bring them home as soon as possible, a position shared by a majority of the American people, by the way.

Helping war veterans is a top priority for me. But ironically, one that in an ideal world would hardly be necessary if the United States adopted what I call a SMART Security plan. War would be an absolute last resort, something we turn to reluctantly, only after every diplomatic channel has been pursued. The smart in SMART Security stands for Sensible Multilateral American Response to Terrorism.

As the tragedy in London demonstrates, our belligerence has not made America or the world safer; and it is time, I believe, that we had a new approach, one that relies on multilateral alliances and improved intelligence to track and detain terrorists, one that renews our commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, one that invests aggressively in international development to attack the poverty and hopelessness that breed terrorism in the first place.

SMART is tough, pragmatic, and patriotic. It protects America by relying on the very best of American values: our commitment to freedom, our compassion for the people of the world, and our capacity for global leadership.

Criticism of our Iraq policy must never be misinterpreted as criticism of those on the ground carrying it out. We must stand with our veterans, the fearless Americans literally wearing the scars of a war that they did not choose. Just because a policy may be flawed, and I believe it is, does not detract from the remarkable job they do. We must show the same selflessness toward them that they have showed toward our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Elissa Giambastiani who is retiring after 18 years as President and CEO of the San Rafael, California, Chamber of Commerce. Under Elissa's dynamic leadership, the Chamber has successfully promoted not only the immediate needs of local businesses but also the long-term economic interests of the community.

As an advocate for workforce housing and transportation infrastructure improvements, Elissa has been in the forefront of efforts to establish a housing trust and to pass a transportation sales tax. Her expertise is widely recognized, and she was recently invited to speak at a National Workforce Housing summit in Arlington, Virginia, on ``Fostering Community Acceptance of Affordable and Workforce Housing.''

Born and raised in Minnesota, Elissa worked there as a teacher before taking a job with the Army teaching in Europe. After her return, she moved to San Francisco where she worked in an architect's office and met her husband Ron Giambastiani who worked in the same office and lived in San Rafael. She also worked as public relations consultant before joining the Chamber in 1987.

As President, Elissa developed and implemented the overall program for an organization with over 950 members. She also took the lead in tracking and advocating the business viewpoint on legislation, including an instrumental role in the formation of the Alliance of North Bay Chambers to increase clout. This function lead to the San Rafael Chamber earning an Advocacy Chamber of the Year Award, one of the first winners in this category which was created by the California Chamber of Commerce in 2003.

Elissa has also won an award from Western Association of Chamber Executives for management excellence and an Accredited Chamber Executive designation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Locally, she is a member of the League of Women Voters, the Ecumenical Association for Housing, and the San Rafael Rotary.

Mr. Speaker, ``tenacious'' and ``tireless'' are appropriate words frequently used to describe Elissa Giambastiani. I would add ``clear- sighted, passionate, and caring,'' all adjectives which do justice to her effectiveness as a leader in of the San Rafael community. I wish her luck in her new pursuits of piano playing, Japanese flower arranging, Italian study, public relations consulting as well as grandmothering.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, so much for President Bush's claim that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we do not have to fight them at home.

The recent tragic terrorist attacks in London disproved that flawed theory. On its very face, the notion that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we do not have to fight them at home is absolutely absurd. For one thing, anyone who thinks the threat of terrorism is not a multipronged threat is kidding himself or herself. That is why it is called global terrorism in the first place. Because the terrorists have the capacity and the will to strike anywhere any time.

As we strive to prevent terrorism in the Western world, we must not forget the terrorism that takes the lives of innocent Iraqis on a daily basis. And we must not forget the terrorism in Iraq is, for the most part, of our very own creation. Despite claims from the White House, there is simply no evidence to support the idea that the Iraq insurgency had ties to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda before the United States invaded.

Sure, al Qaeda is doing its best to align the Iraq insurgents now, but would that have happened if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq in 2003? It is clear that the President's notion of taking the fight to the terrorists instead of letting them take the fight to the U.S. is yet another example of the Bush administration twisting public perception to portray the war in Iraq as linked to 9/11.

The truth is that no such link exists. Logic such as this damages our credibility with other nations and hampers our ability to address the truth with facts in the first place. It is clear that the war in Iraq hurts our efforts to combat terrorism in several ways: First, by draining personnel and resources and next by engaging in policies that give the Iraqi people a reason, a legitimate reason for anger aimed at the United States. With the United States appearing as an occupier and with our troops blamed for destroying Iraqi communities and harming innocent people, the Iraqi people are becoming our enemy and many are joining the insurgency.

We have already spent over $200 billion on this war. And with $9 billion of this lost by the Coalition Provisional Authority, and worse, nearly 2,000 American soldiers have been killed, and dozens more are being killed by insurgent attacks every single week, while another 15,000 soldiers have been gravely injured and thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis are gone.

What do we have to show for these devastating losses? What has been accomplished? Very little, I am sad to say. Despite the thousands of deaths and injuries, and the billions of dollars spent, the United States has failed to make Iraq secure. We have failed to stabilize the Middle East.

And as the London bombings demonstrated, we have failed to prevent the terrorists from striking Western cities. The London attacks could have just as easily been New York or Washington, D.C. or San Francisco; so it is not just that we failed in Iraq. This failure has corresponded with failures to secure the U.S. right here at home.

It is time for the United States to begin the process to bring our brave men and women home from Iraq. By beginning this process, we will not only give the Iraqi people the opportunity to move forward; we will also save the lives of countless American soldiers, and we will free up our resources for protecting Americans right here at home, which is in line with the SMART Security approach.

SMART is a security platform that I have introduced in Congress to provide a Sensible Multilateral American Response to Terrorism. SMART emphasizes homeland security, and instead of aggressively throwing our military weight around the globe, SMART depends on diplomacy and good international relations.

It is clear that the war in Iraq has not made the United States safer, but actually less safe. Ending the war and giving Iraq back to the Iraqi people, who went to the polls to take control of their own country, will be a great first step in preventing future terrorism.

Ending the war will help protect our Nation. We are already 2 years behind time in making this happen, 2 years too late. Let U.S. start catching up. Let the U.S. start now.

Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the President last night, I questioned just how much longer he will milk the tragedy of 9/11 to defend his actions in Iraq.

Maybe he does not know yet that the Iraq situation had nothing to do with 9/11, but the people of this Nation absolutely do know; and what we would want from the President and what we wanted last night was a promise to the troops, to their families, and to this country that he is putting together a plan to bring them home.

But, no. He continues to use 9/11 for his excuse for a preemptive war, a war that has made the United States less secure, not more secure.