国会记录：2005年1月6日，（参议院）页S37-S39伊拉克DAYTON先生。上周，参议员利伯曼和我前往伊拉克，巴格达。当我在一年半以前访问了伊拉克，我们在巴格达和其他城市，巴士拉和提克里特参议院代表团，登上武装悍马车，并与军队护送驱车整个那些各自城市。上周，我们只限于出于安全原因，以戒备森严的绿区，这是美国军队的指挥所，我们的政府代表和伊拉克政府。对于这些限制的必要性显而易见，因为反对派政治领导人之一，其中我们应该以满足和我们设想在5分钟前往绿区之外是一个暗杀目标尝试前一天。他没有受到伤害，但一名自杀炸弹炸死自己和位置之外其他九名伊拉克人在这次会议是发生，这强调了环境的危险性质和我们自己的力量提供必要的和完全的安全谁正在执行的不可能性英勇继续冒着生命危险，在某些情况下放弃自己的生命，可悲的是，以保护从叛军这是残酷的，有时他们正打算在那个特定的国家做致死有效伊拉克人民。星期天，我曾有机会以满足几百明尼苏达州，亲人谁是伊拉克目前担任的家庭成员。他们一遍又一遍地问同样的问题：如果是我们的丈夫，妻子，儿子，父亲，母亲，什么时候回家？虽然我反对在2002年10月伊拉克战争的分辨率和继续相信，不幸的是，我们有一个整体的基础上削弱了我们的国家安全，而不是由我们的行动加强了它，我们都在那里，我们的武装部队150,000承诺。 It is imperative we succeed. It is also imperative that we start to devise--we should have already--a strategy to bring our troops home safely as soon as possible with the victory secure. The only way victory will be ultimately secured is by the Iraqi people. When Senator Lieberman and I met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq he said exactly that: The security of Iraq can only be gained by the Iraqi people. The process from being subject to a brutal dictator, tyrannical oppression for over a quarter of a century, to self- determining democracy is an enormous social transformation, one that will probably take several years. When we justify, by those who are responsible for our continued presence in Iraq, what we are doing there, they need to be very clear about the parameters. First, we were looking for weapons of mass destruction which turned out not to exist there. Then it was an alleged link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida which has never been demonstrated to exist. Then it was opposing an evil dictator, which Saddam Hussein certainly was, which was achieved in the first 3 weeks of magnificent effort by our military. For the last 21 months it has been protecting as much as possible the country and protecting the time necessary for the Iraqi people to form a government, which they are in the process of doing. Holding the election on January 30 as scheduled is essential to doing that. Training and equipping the Iraqi forces--police, military, national guard--to be able to do what the people of any country have to do to have a functional country under any form of government, which is to protect and defend their own country, has been regretfully a very slow process. I asked the United States military command and our civilian leadership in Iraq as well as the Iraqi Government authorities how far they thought we had progressed from a starting point to 100 percent Iraqi self-sufficiency regarding their own self-security and the answer was variously between 40 and 50 percent. We have initiated and engaged in and this Congress has funded to the full extent requested by the administration the Iraqi security training programs for over a year, about 15 or 16 months. [[Page S38]] It is obviously a difficult assignment, given that the previous military structure of the country was removed by the Provisional Authority, but that decision has been made and now that process of retraining new forces has been underway for 15, 16 months and we are told it is not even half way there. The Iraqi people need to be responsible for their own country. They must be responsible for their own country. They must decide to stand up for themselves. Many are doing so and even giving their lives to conduct this upcoming election and engaging in various security actions. But the brunt of that responsibility, the burden, the fighting, the bleeding, the dying, is still being incurred by our own forces. We need to know when that is going to be able to stop. We need to know how that transition and when that transition is going to occur. We need to put the Iraqi people and our allies on notice that we are not going to be there indefinitely and that they need to be willing to step forward to provide what I think everyone wants, most of the world wants: a stable, secure, and successful Iraq. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I have been increasingly frustrated by our inability, either in the committee, whether in public or secret briefings, whether as a body or through other discussions, to get what turns out to be accurate and reliable information from the civilian command, from the administration. Yesterday afternoon we had an Armed Services Committee hearing, a secret hearing, for 3 hours. I received information regarding the force capabilities of the Iraqi police and military that was at significant variance from what I was told a week before in Baghdad, which itself was at considerable variance from what we were told 2 months before, which then was half of the force level we were told existed a year before that. What the numbers are, what the training capabilities are--I hesitate to use this word on the Senate floor, but it applies here--I don't like being lied to. I am elected to represent the people of Minnesota. I am elected to look out for their best interests. I met on Sunday with a few hundred Minnesota family members who were depending upon me to look out for the interests of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives. I take that as a life-or-death responsibility, as it is to them and their loved ones and all the members of the U.S. Armed Forces, putting their lives on the line every day. They deserve to know, we deserve to know, the American people deserve to know from this administration their plan, what is their timetable, and what kind of progress are we making. We deserve to know the facts. We deserve to be told facts today that hold up as the truth tomorrow. I regret to say that is not occurring. It has not occurred, not only in this instance yesterday but in other significant respects throughout the last several months. I appreciate enormously and admire tremendously the leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee under its chairman, Senator Warner, and its ranking member, Senator Levin. Senator Warner has convened any number of hearings and briefings on the situation in Iraq and other places around the world, on the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, on the armoring and rearmoring of the equipment and personnel for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last month, we have found, according to the private contractors, there was an unused capacity in their production capabilities of 25 percent for armored Humvees and these rearmoring kits for those Humvees that are over there in Afghan and Iraq that are unarmored, a 25-percent unused capacity because of a lack of production orders from our military, when we were told--and we asked, Republican and Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee alike, repeatedly: What do you need? What money, laws, procedures? What do you need to maximize production and immediate distribution to protect our men and women serving in Iraq? We were assured, again and again and again, there was 100-percent production, that everything was being done, and that they did not need anything. And then we find out there is significant variance to that, in fact, in the truth. Chairman Warner convened several hearings in the last 6 months on the alleged prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. There were rumors of abuses occurring elsewhere in Iraq and elsewhere in the world. We were assured again and again by the administration and the other authorities who spoke before us that it was limited to those isolated instances in Iraq and in the Abu Ghraib prison. Now it comes to light, in the last month, there were documented reports through the chain of command, information that people who testified before our committee had to be aware of when they told us in committee hearings information that was at variance with those reports. Similarly, the status of the Iraqi security and military forces-- being told by the Secretary of Defense, who I think believed what he was telling us because that was the information he was given, a year ago that force level was at 202,000; and then to find out last September 15, in public remarks he made elsewhere, that number was about half that level; and then to get published reports that the actual number is some 78,000; and then to get a report last week that the number is somewhat above that; and then to get a report yesterday that the number is some tens of thousands above that. Having that number not being able to be confirmed by those who are testifying before us is a great travesty of justice and legality, and their moral, ethical responsibility to tell us the truth and give us the facts so we can make those judgments that we are elected and held responsible to make, along with them, so that hopefully the collective wisdom of all of us serves the best interests of this country, its foreign policy, and the lives of its men and women who are serving us overseas, and who, for every day we keep them over there, are continuing to risk their lives, and some of them losing their lives or losing limbs, bodily functions. This is life and death, and it is time we stop being lied to. I want this administration, I want the Pentagon command, to tell us the facts, tell us the truth about the situation in Iraq--what is going right, but what is going wrong, to tell us the truth and the facts about the capability of the Iraqi forces to replace ours, to take over responsibility for the law and order of their own country, to tell us the truth and the facts about the economic recovery projects, which ones have started, which ones have not, how much money has been expended, how much money has been wasted, how much money has been stolen. It is shameful this body, which has the history of Harry Truman setting up a special committee during World War II to investigate the proper contracting, the proper expenditure of taxpayer dollars for a defense effort, where again American men and women were relying on that equipment, relying on getting it right away, and living or dying as a result--Harry Truman said: I don't care whether they are Democratic contractors or Republican, let the chips fall where they may and the truth be known. He went on to become the Vice President and then the President of the United States because he had that kind of integrity and that kind of courage. We ought to see that today on the other side of the aisle, to be willing to investigate these matters. Whether it is a Republican administration or a Democratic administration, I don't care; it is an American administration. Those are American soldiers putting their lives on the line. We are all responsible, and we can't even get anybody to look into what is happening or not happening there, and we can't get anybody to tell us the facts, the truth. It is deplorable. It is unconscionable. It is un-American. And it is intolerable. I think this body collectively needs to stand up and demand that we get the facts and the truth so we can go back home and tell those sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and husbands and wives what is happening to their loved ones over in Iraq, and when they are coming home with the victory they worked for, lived for, bled for, and died for secured, and how we are going to do that and when. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeMint). The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. [[Page S39]] Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________