|
Home
Up
Search Our Site
Communicate with other DFAOC members through
To join, e-mail
Dave Martin
Learn More About Legislation in Congress at:
Current
Terror Alert Level
Thanks to Geek and Proud, Alan Penner
Cost of the
War in Iraq
| |
What I Didn't See in Iraq
By Congressman Jim McGovern
02 May 2005 Issue
"Trust me when I tell you things are so much better in Iraq," said one US
military official to me on my recent visit to that war-ravaged country. I didn't
know whether to scream or pull the remaining two strands of hair out of my head.
I was in Iraq as part of a delegation of eight members of Congress, led by House
minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Everything we have been told about Iraq by the
Bush Administration has either been an outright lie or overwhelmingly false.
There were no weapons of mass destruction; we have not been greeted as
liberators; and the cost in terms of blood and treasure has outpaced even their
worst-case scenarios. Trust is something I cannot give to this Administration.
If things in Iraq are so much better, why are we not decreasing the
number of US forces there? Why is the insurgency showing no signs of waning? Why
are we being told that in a few months the Administration will again ask
Congress for billions of dollars more to fight the war? Why, according to the
World Food Program, is hunger among the Iraqi people getting worse? It's time
for some candor, but candor is hard to come by in Iraq.
We were in Iraq for one day - for security reasons, it is US policy that
Congressional delegations are not allowed to spend the night. We spent most of
our time in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which serves as coalition
headquarters. It's the most heavily guarded encampment I've ever seen - and it
still gets attacked. I even had armed guards accompany me to the bathroom. The
briefings we received from US military and diplomatic officials were, to say the
least, unsatisfying. The Nixonian approach that our military and diplomatic
leaders have adopted in dealing with visiting members of Congress is aimed more
at saving face than at engaging in an honest dialogue. At first, our briefers
wanted to get away with slick slide presentations, but we insisted on asking
real questions and attempting to get real answers.
During one such briefing, Lieut. Gen. David Petraeus, tasked with
overseeing training of Iraqi security forces, informed us that 147,000 Iraqis
had been trained. That sounded good to me. Perhaps we could start reducing the
number of American forces, I suggested. But upon further questioning, General
Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 were actually "combat
capable." Why didn't he say that to begin with? I asked - respectfully - our
military and diplomatic officials what the gap was between the Iraqis we have
trained and the number we needed to train in order to draw down the number of US
troops. I could not get a straight answer.
During the morning of our visit, US military officials crowed about a
recent operation in which Iraqi security forces had killed eighty-five
insurgents. By the afternoon, when more reports came in, it was unclear how many
insurgents had actually been killed and whether the Iraqi security forces had
exaggerated their own actions.
I asked both General Petraeus and our embassy about US plans to build
military bases in Iraq, which in my view would indicate a prolonged US presence.
I was told - emphatically - that there are no plans to construct military bases.
Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill
that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for
military base construction. In Iraq.
Shortly before we traveled to Iraq we visited Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, who lamented the mistakes the United States has made post-invasion,
including the total dissolution of all the Iraqi security forces. He said, "The
army you disbanded is now the army you're fighting." But I couldn't get a single
US official to acknowledge any mistakes. The standard line remains, "We're
moving in the right direction."
It's hard to believe that after a two-year occupation the average Iraqi
isn't getting tired of the overwhelming US presence. We met with several Iraqi
women leaders, including members of the National Assembly, who told us that
there was more electricity available in Iraq before the invasion than afterward.
It's also certain that the insurgency uses our presence as an organizing tool to
recruit members and weapons. While we can all be encouraged by the turnout in
the recent Iraqi elections, it is impossible for the Iraqi people to truly
determine their own fate in a climate where there is no security.
And while US officials point to a declining number of coalition
casualties, there is still an unacceptably high level of violence in Iraq. One
military leader told us they can tell that things are changing for the better
because when US helicopters fly over certain areas of Iraq, Iraqis wave. Well, I
took a helicopter ride (it's too dangerous to drive) from the Baghdad airport to
the Green Zone wearing an armored vest and sandwiched between two heavily armed
American soldiers who were pointing their guns down at the ground. I suggested
to the military leader that perhaps he was confusing a wave with a plea not to
shoot.
Our young men and women in uniform are performing their difficult duties
extraordinarily well. Indeed, the only honest and direct responses I got from
any American in Iraq were from the soldiers. They told me they had been
instructed by their superiors not to share any complaints with visitors.
What worries me almost as much as our misguided policy in Iraq is that so
many of my colleagues and so many citizens have become resigned to the fact that
the war will go on. Congress is not being inundated with letters and phone calls
and faxes and e-mails and street protests demanding an end to our presence in
Iraq. President Bush's re-election seems to have taken much of the energy out of
the antiwar movement. My recent visit to Iraq only strengthened my belief that
this war is wrong. And only renewed, passionate dissent by the American people
can end it.
|
Democracy
for America
-
Orange County