Iraq Cannot Be Won By Rep. John Murtha

Iraq Cannot Be Won
By Rep. John Murtha

Posted on November 19, 2005,
< http://www.alternet.org/story/28432/>

Following is the transcript of a speech by conservative
Democratic Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania on
October 17. Murtha is the ranking Democrat on the House
Appropriation Committee's defense panel.

I just spoke to the Democratic Caucus and told them my
feelings about the war. And I started out by saying the
war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed
policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way
ahead of the members of Congress.

The United States and coalition troops have done all
they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in
direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our
country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present
course. It is evident that continued military action in
Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of
America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

General Casey said, in a September 2005 hearing, the
perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving
force behind the insurgency. General Abizaid said, on
the same date, reducing the size of visibility of the
coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our
counterinsurgency strategy.

For two and a half years, I've been concerned about U.S.
policy and the plan in Iraq. I've addressed my concerns
with the administration and the Pentagon, and I've
spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason
for going to war has been discredited.

A few days before the start of the war, I was in Kuwait.

The military drew a line -- a red line around Baghdad,
and they said when U.S. forces cross that line, they
will be attacked by the Iraqis with weapons of mass
destruction. And I believed it, and they believed it.
But the U.S. forces -- the commander said, they were
prepared. They said they had well-trained forces with
the appropriate protective gear.

Now, let me tell you we've spent more money on
intelligence than any -- than all the countries in the
world put together and more on intelligence than most
countries' GDP. And when they said it's a world
intelligence failure, it's a U.S. intelligence failure.
It's a U.S. failure, and it's a failure in the way the
intelligence was used.

I've been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and
Walter Reed, as some of you know, almost every week
since the beginning of the war. And what demoralizes
them is not the criticism; what demoralizes them is
going to war with not enough troops and equipment to
make the transition to peace. The devastation caused by
IEDs is what they're concerned about, being deployed to
Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes --
and you've seen these stories about some of the people's
whose homes were destroyed, and they were deployed to
Iraq after it -- being on their second or third
deployment, leaving their families behind without a
network of support.

The threat by terrorism is real, but we have other
threats that cannot be ignored. We must prepare to face
all these threats. The future of our military is at
risk. Our military and their families are stretched
thin. Many say the Army's broken. Some of our troops are
on their third deployment. Recruitment is down even as
the military's lowered its standards. They expect to
take 20 percent Category 4, which is the lowest
category, which they said they'd never take, but they've
been forced to do that, to try to meet a reduced quota.
Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are
skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will
have to be made, and we cannot allow promises we have
made to our military families in terms of service
benefits, in terms of their health care, to be
negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our
military dominance cannot be negotiated away.

We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge
shortfalls in our bases at home. I've been to three
bases in the United States, and each one of them were
short of things they need to train the people going to
Iraq. Much of our ground equipment is worn out. And I've
told the COs you better get in the business of
rehabilitating equipment because we're not going to be
able to buy any new equipment because the money's not
going to be there.

George Washington said to be prepared for war is one of
the most effective means of preserving peace. We don't
want somebody to miscalculate down the road. It takes us
18 years to put a weapon system in the arsenal. And I
don't know what the threat is, nobody knows what the
threat is, but we better make sure we have what's
necessary to preserve our peace. We must rebuild our
Army.

Our deficit is growing out of control. The director of
the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to
being terrified about the deficit in the coming decades.
In other words, where's the money going to come from for
defense?

I voted against every tax cut -- every tax cut I voted
against. My wife says, "You shouldn't say that." I
believe that when we voted for these tax cuts, you can't
have a war, you can't have a tragedy like we had, the
hurricanes, and then not have a huge deficit, which is
going to increase interest rates and could cause real
problems. This is the first prolonged war we've ever
fought with three years of tax cuts without full
mobilization of American industry and without a draft.
On the college campuses they always ask me about a
draft: You're for a draft. I say yeah, there's only two
of us voted for it, so you don't have to worry too much
about it.

The burden of this war has not been shared equally. The
military and their families are shouldering the burden.
Our military has been fighting this war in Iraq for over
two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its
mission and done its duty.

Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed
his closest associates. But the war continues to
intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, and over
2,079 in confirmed American deaths, over 15,500 have
been seriously injured -- half of them returned to duty,
and it's estimated over 50,000 will suffer from what I
call battle fatigue. And there have been reports that at
least 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.

I just recently visited Anbar province in Iraq in order
to assess the conditions on the ground. And last May we
put in the emergency supplemental spending bill -- [the]
Moran amendment -- which was accepted in conference,
which required the secretary of Defense to submit a
quarterly report about the -- and accurately measure the
stability and security in Iraq. Now -- we've now
received two reports. So I've just come back from Iraq,
and I looked at the next report. I'm disturbed by the
findings in the key indicator areas.

Oil production and energy production are below prewar
level. You remember they said that was going to pay for
the war, and it's proved to (be) below prewar level. Our
reconstruction efforts have been crippled by security
situations. Only $9 billion of $18 billion appropriated
for reconstruction has been spent. And I said on the
floor of the House, when they passed the $87 billion,
the $18 billion was the most important part of it
because you got to get people back to work, you got to
get electricity, you got to get water! Unemployment is
60 percent. Now, they tell you in the United States it's
less than that, so it may be 40 percent. But in Iraq,
they told me it's 60 percent when I was there. Clean
water is scarce, and they only spent $500 million of the
$2.2 billion appropriated for water projects.

And most importantly -- this is the most important point
-- incidents have increased from 150 to a week to over
700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over
a time when addition of more troops -- when we had
addition of more troops, attacks have grown
dramatically. Since the revelation of Abu Ghraib,
American casualties have doubled. You look at the
timeline. You'll see one per day average before Abu
Ghraib. After Abu Ghraib, you'll see two a day -- two
killed per day because of the dramatic impact that Abu
Ghraib had on what we were doing in [Iraq. And] the
State Department reported in 2004, right before they
quit putting the reports out, that -- they indicated a
sharp increase in global terrorism.

I said over a year ago now, the military and the
administration agrees now that Iraq cannot be won
militarily.

I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is
Iraqitize, internationalize and energize.

Now, we have a packet for you where I sent a letter to
the president in September, and I got an answer back
from assistant secretary of Defense five months later. I
believe the same today. They don't want input. They only
want to criticize. They -- Bush One was the opposite;
Bush One might not like the criticism and constructive
suggestions, but he listened to what we had to say.

I believe that and I have concluded the presence of U.S.
troops in Iraq is impeding this progress. Our troops
have become the primary target of the insurgency. They
are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a
catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy
of the Sunnis, the Saddamists and the foreign jihadists.
And let me tell you, they haven't captured any in this
latest activity, so this idea that they're coming in
from outside, we still think [they constitute] only
seven percent [of the insurgency].

I believe with the U.S. troop redeployment the Iraqi
security forces will be incentivized to take control. A
poll recently conducted -- this is a British poll
reported in The Washington Times -- over 80 percent of
Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition
forces, and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe
attacks against American troops are justified. I believe
we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe
before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December,
the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put
on notice. The United States will immediately redeploy
-- immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be
changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis, this
is an immediate redeployment of our American forces
because they have become the target.

All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free -- free from a
United States occupation, and I believe this will send a
signal to the Sunnis to join the political process. My
experience in a guerrilla war says that until you find
out where they are, until the public is willing to tell
you where the insurgent is, you're not going to win this
war, and Vietnam was the same way. If you have an
operation -- a military operation and you tell the
Sunnis because the families are in jeopardy, they -- or
you tell the Iraqis, then they are going to tell the
insurgents, because they're worried about their
families.

My plan calls for immediate redeployment of U.S. troops
consistent with the safety of U.S. forces, to create a
quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-
the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically
pursue security and stability in Iraq.

Now let me personalize this thing for you. I go out to
the hospitals every week. One of my first visits, two
young women. One was 22 or 23, had two children, lost
her husband. One was 19. And they both went out to the
hospitals to tell the people out there how happy they
were -- or how happy they should be to be alive. In
other words, they were reaching out because they felt
their husbands had done their duty, but they wanted to
tell them that they were so fortunate, even though they
were wounded, to be alive.

I have a young fellow in my district who was blinded and
he lost his foot. They did everything they could for him
at Walter Reed, then they sent him home. His father was
in jail. He had nobody at home. Imagine this. A young
kid that age, 22, 23 years old, goes home to nobody. VA
did everything they could do to help him. He was
reaching out.

So they sent him -- to make sure that he was a blind,
they sent him to Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins started
sending bills. Then the collection agency started
sending bills. Well, when I found out about it, you
could imagine they stopped the collection agency and
Walter Reed finally paid the bill. But imagine, a young
person being blinded, without a foot, and he's getting
bills from a collection agency.

I saw a young soldier who lost two legs and an arm, and
his dad was pushing him around.

I go to the mental ward; you know what they say to me?
They got battle fatigue. You know what they say? "We
don't get nothing. We get nothing. We're just as
bruised, just as injured as everybody else, but we don't
even get a Purple Heart. We get nothing. We get shunted
aside. We get looked at as if there's something wrong
with us."

Saw a young woman from Notre Dame. Basketball player,
right- handed, lost her right hand. You know what she's
worried about? She's worried about her husband because
he lost weight worrying about her. These are great
people. These soldiers and people who are serving,
they're marvelous people.

I saw a Seabee lying there with three children. His
mother and his wife were there. He was paralyzed from
the neck down. There were 18 of them killed in this one
mortar attack. And they were all crying because they
knew what it would be like in the future.

I saw a Marine rubbing his boy's hand. He was a Marine
in Vietnam, and his son had just come back from Iraq.
And he said he wanted his brother to come home. That's
what the father said, because the kid couldn't speak. He
was in a coma.

He kept rubbing his hand.

He didn't want to come home. I told him the Marine Corps
would get him home.

I had one other kid, lost both his hands. Blinded. I was
praising him, saying how proud we were of him and how
much we appreciate his service to the country. "Anything
I can do for you?" His mother said get me a -- "Get him
a Purple Heart." I said, "What do you mean, get him a
Purple Heart?"

He had been wounded in taking care of bomblets, these
bomblets that they drop that they have to dismantle. He
had been wounded and lost both his hands. The kid behind
him was killed.

His mother said, "Because they're friendly bomblets,
they wouldn't give him a Purple Heart."

I met with the commandant. I said, "If you don't give
him a Purple Heart, I'll give him one of mine." And they
gave him a Purple Heart.

Let me tell you something. We're charged -- Congress is
charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle,
and it's our responsibility, our obligation to speak out
for them. That's why I'm speaking out.

Our military's done everything that has been asked of
them. U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq
militarily; it's time to bring the troops home.

? 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.