Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I compliment Senator Inhofe in that moving tribute to a fallen marine. The issue we have before the Senate is one of great importance to the country. It will affect the future of this bill. It will affect the national security needs of our Nation for a long time to come. It is a bit complicated, but at the end of the day, I don't think it is that difficult to get your hands around. We are talking about a habeas corpus amendment to the Defense authorization bill that will confer upon any combatants housed at Guantanamo Bay, and maybe other places, the ability, as an enemy prisoner, to go to a Federal court of their choosing to bring lawsuits against the Government, against the military--something never granted to any other prisoner in any other war. We had thousands of Japanese and German prisoners housed on American territory during World War II and not one of those Germans or Japanese prisoners were allowed to go to Federal court to sue the troops who had caught them on the battlefield or the Government holding them in detention as a prisoner of war. To start that process now would be an absolute disaster for this country and has never been done before and should not be done now. Now, the history of this issue: Guantanamo Bay is the place where international terrorists are sent, people suspected of being involved in the war on terror. Shaikh Mohammed is there, some very high-value targets are there, bin Ladin's driver. People who have been involved with al-Qaida activity and other terrorist groups are housed at Guantanamo Bay under the theory that they are unlawful enemy combatants. They do not wear a uniform as did the Germans and the Japanese, but they are very much at war with this country. They attack civilians randomly. Nothing is out of bounds in terms of their conduct. So they fit the definition, if there ever was one, of an unlawful enemy combatant. What they do in the law of war is unlawful. They certainly are enemies of this country. Shaikh Mohammed's transcript regarding his Combatant Status Review Tribunal--take time to read it. I can assure you he is at war with us. We need to be at war with him. The basic premise I have been pushing now for years is that the attacks of 9/11 against the World Trade Center, against the Pentagon, the hijacking of the airplanes were an act of war. It would be a huge mistake for this country to look at the attacks of 9/11 as criminal activity. We are at war, and we should be applying the law of armed conflict. The people whom we are fighting very much fall into the category of ``warriors'' based on their actions and their own words. What is the law of armed conflict? The law of armed conflict is governed by a lot of international treaties, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and American case law. What rights does an unlawful enemy combatant have? Well, our court looked at Guantanamo Bay. Habeas petitions were filed by detainees at Guantanamo Bay alleging that they were improperly held. The U.S. Supreme Court in the Rasul v. Bush decision in 2004 said: There is a congressional statute, 2241, that deals with habeas rights created by statute. The Government argued that Guantanamo Bay was outside the jurisdiction of Federal courts; it was not part of the United States. The Supreme Court said: No, wait a minute. Guantanamo Bay is effectively controlled by the Navy; it is part of the United States. The question for the court is, Did the Congress, under 2241, intend to exclude al-Qaida from the statute? And the answer was that Congress had taken no action. So the issue, 6 years after the war started here: Does the Congress wish to confer upon enemy combatant terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay habeas corpus rights under section 2241, a statute we wrote? That is the issue. Now, imagine after 9/11 if someone had come to the floor of the Senate and made the proposal: In case we catch anybody who attacked us on 9/11, I want to make sure they have the right of habeas corpus under 2241 because I want to make sure their rights exceed any other prisoner in any other war. I think you would have gotten zero votes. Well, that is the issue. Now, last year, Congress spoke to the courts, and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals understood what we were saying. Congress affirmatively struck from 2241 the ability of a noncitizen alien enemy combatant to have access to Federal court under the habeas statute. Why is that so important? From a military point of view, it is hugely important. Under the law of armed conflict, if there is a question of status--is the person a civilian? Are they part of an organized group? Are they an unlawful combatant? There are many different categories that can be conferred upon someone captured on a battlefield. Under Geneva Conventions article 5, a competent tribunal should be impaneled--usually one person--to determine questions of status, and the only requirement is they be impartial. The question of who an enemy combatant is is a military decision. We should not allow Federal judges, through habeas petitions, to take away from the U.S. military what is effectively a military function of labeling who the enemies of America are. They are not trained for that. Our judges do not have the military background to make decisions as to who the enemy force is and how they operate. So a habeas petition would really intrude into the military's ability to manage this war because if habeas rights were granted by statute to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, they could pick, through their lawyers, any district court in this country. They could go judge shopping and find any judge in this country they believed would be sympathetic and have a full-blown trial, calling people off the battlefield, having a complete trial as to whether this person is an enemy combatant in Federal court and let the judge make that decision. Well, that has never been done in any other war, and it should not be done in this war. Judges have a role to play in war, but that is not their role. The role of the U.S. military in this war, as it has been in every other war, is to capture people and classify them based on their activity within that war, and habeas would undo that. That is why last year Congress said: No, that is not the way we should proceed in this war. This is not unknown to our courts. In World War II, there was a habeas petition filed by German and Japanese prisoners who were housed overseas asking the Federal courts to hear their case and release them from American military confinement. Chief Justice Jackson said: It would be difficult to devise a more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he has ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. Justice Jackson was right. And what has happened since these habeas petitions have been filed? Hundreds of them have been filed in Federal court before Congress acted. Here is what they are alleging: A Canadian detainee who threw a grenade that killed an American medic in a firefight and who comes from a family with long-standing al-Qaida ties moved for a preliminary injunction forbidding interrogation of him or engaging in cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of him. This was a motion made by an enemy prisoner for the judge to sit in there and conduct the interrogation or at least monitor the interrogation. I cannot think of anything worse in terms of undermining the war effort. A motion by a high-level al-Qaida detainee complaining about base security procedures, speed of mail delivery, medical treatment, seeking an order that he be transferred to the least onerous conditions at GITMO, asking the court to order that GITMO allow him to keep any books, reading materials sent to him, and report to the court on his opportunities for exercise, communications, recreation, and worship. Hundreds of these lawsuits have been filed under the habeas statute. That is why Congress said: No, dismiss these cases because they have no business in Federal court. Surely to God, al-Qaida is not going to get more rights than the Nazis. Surely to God, the Congress, 6 years after 9/11, will not, hopefully, give a statutory right to some of the most brutal, vicious people in the world to bring lawsuits against our own troops in a fashion never allowed in any other war. Here is what we did last year: We allowed the military to determine whether a person is an enemy combatant, whether they were an unlawful enemy combatant through a competent tribunal called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal made up of three officers. The legislation allows every decision by the military to be appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals so the court can look at the quality of the work product and the procedures in place. There is Federal court review over activity at Guantanamo Bay where judges review the work product of the military. To me, that is the proper way to move forward because some people at Guantanamo Bay, because they are so dangerous, may not be released anytime soon or may never be released. More people have been released at Guantanamo Bay than are still at Guantanamo Bay. They were thought not to be a threat. Thirty of them have gone back to the fight. We have released people at Guantanamo Bay to take up arms against us again. That is the result of a process where you make a discretionary decision. It would be ill-advised for this Congress to confer on American courts the ability to hear a habeas petition from enemy prisoners housed at Guantanamo Bay where they could go judge shopping and sue our own troops for anything they could think of, including a $100 million lawsuit against the Secretary of Defense. That will lead to chaos at the jail. It will undermine the war effort. I am urging a ``no'' vote to this amendment. We have in place Federal court review of every military decision at Guantanamo Bay and a way to allow the courts to do what they are best trained to do--review documents, review procedures, review outcomes--not to take the place of the U.S. military. I cannot think of a more ill-advised effort to undercut what I think is going to be a war of a long-standing nature than to turn it over to the judges and to take away the ability to define the enemy from the military, which is trained to make such decisions, and give it to whatever judge you can find, wherever you can find him or her, and let them have a full-blown trial at our national security detriment. I urge a ``no'' vote. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I will try my best. No. 1, my time in the service has been as a military lawyer. I am not a combat operational guy. If you want to talk about my experiences in the military, I am glad to talk about them, but they are limited, and I know how far they should go--not very. As a JAG colonel, I cannot tell you how to deploy troops. I don't know. That is out of my line. I have to make a decision as a Senator when the general comes, as Senator McCain says, as to whether it makes sense to me. I would not advise any Member of this body to follow a four star general's recommendation just because of the number of stars. Here is what I would advise the Members of this body to do. Listen to what the general says. Use your own common sense. Go in theater and see if it makes sense. For 3\1/2\ years, we went to Iraq and we were told by the generals in the old strategy that things were fine. On about the third trip with Senator McCain, I would say we were in a tank. I am a lawyer, so I don't understand military deployments and how to deploy combat troops. But I can tell you this from a lawyer's perspective and from good old South Carolina common sense: After the third visit to Iraq, if you thought things were getting better, you were crazy. We blamed it on the Republican side. The media doesn't tell the story right. It wasn't the media's fault. We were losing operational control of Iraq because we didn't have enough troops. You could see it if you wanted to look. If you were blinded by the partisanship that exists in this building, you will find some other group to blame it on. But it was there to be seen. I have been seven times--twice in uniform--working on issues where I think I have a little bit to offer. My contribution is insignificant, inconsequential, but I am honored to have been able to be allowed to go, because I am cheering on people over there and I am still in uniform and I am the only one left, and I wish I could stay over there longer because I feel an obligation to do so. Here is the morale as I see it this time around. A year ago, I was in Iraq--maybe a little bit longer--sitting at lunch across the table with a sergeant. I asked him: Sergeant, how is it going? He said: Senator, I feel like I am driving around waiting to get shot. Not going very well. This last tour, when I was there for 11 days, I got to have three meals a day with them in Baghdad and meet folks with different missions and responsibilities, including combat guys coming in from the field. I sat down with them every night and I asked: How is it going? I was told: Colonel, we are kicking their ass. Morale is high because of the new strategy. They are fighting and living with the Iraqi troops out in the field. Their army is getting better. When you talk to the marines in Anbar, they will tell you with pride: Look at what we did here. For us politicians to deny what they did is an insult to their hard work. They liberated Anbar Province because there were enough of them this time around to join up with the Sunnis in Anbar to make a difference and drive out al-Qaida. This new strategy--and everybody has been asking for something new for a long time--is working. It is working. There are areas in Iraq, as Senator McCain described, that are liberated from a vicious enemy. On the rule-of-law front, judges have a new level of security because of the surge that they have never known before. The first thing General Petraeus did when he went in theater was create a rule-of-law green zone for judges. We have taken an old Iraqi base and built housing for judges and created a perimeter of security. We have a jail inside the complex, judge housing, a police station, and a brandnew courtroom, so that the judges can implement the law without fear of assassination. I have never seen such growth in an area as I have in the rule of law since the surge began. The judges now are able to do their job without their families being assassinated, and we have seen dramatic improvements. I will give you two examples. There was a Shia police captain accused of torturing Sunnis at the police station he was in charge of. He is now facing a long-term prison sentence because the Iraqi legal system didn't listen to the fact that he was a Shia and the people he abused were Sunni. They gave a verdict based on what he did, not who he did it to. It is sweeping the whole legal system. Judges are going into areas that al-Qaida operated from just months ago and they are rendering justice, but not based on what sect you come from; it is based on what the person was accused of. I witnessed a trial downtown Baghdad where two people of the three were Shia police officers in the Iraqi police force. There was a raid on the house they were living in by the American forces. Coalition troops were the only witnesses and these two defendants who were in a house full of IED material, rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices that were meant to kill Americans. The defense said: Who are you going to believe, us or the invader? The lawyers in the trial looked the judge in the eye and started citing one verse of the Koran after another to tell the judge he had a duty to stand beside his Muslim brothers and reject the testimony of the infidels. I was there; I saw it. The three judges conducted a trial that everybody who witnessed that trial would have been proud of. They asked hard questions. They separated the defendants, and rather than listening to dictates from the Koran coming out of the mouth of their lawyer, they asked questions such as how were they in the house, and how could they not have known the weapons were there? They did a great job proving these guys were lying through their teeth. When they reconvened, they got convicted, getting 6 years in jail. There is progress going on in Iraq. There are people in Iraq who are bigger than sectarian differences. There are judges, lawyers, and average, everyday people who are risking their lives to make their country better. One of the biggest problems they have had is that we screwed up early on and let security get out of hand. With better security, people are beginning to engage in a way I have never seen before. This idea of pulling back now, reducing our military footprint, at a time when we have made a real difference, is too disheartening to the troops. They are watching what we are doing. I was stopped every 30 feet with questions such as: What are we going to do? Is the war going to go on? Are they going to cut it short? The people fighting want one thing, and that is the ability to finish the job. Do they want to come home? Yes, God knows they want to be home. Are they tired of going over? Yes. But above all others, they want to win. Senator McCain said he met people for the third and fourth time. Well, nobody stays in this military unless they volunteer, to begin with, and when their enlistment is up, there are stop-loss problems, but there is an end to this war for them; it is an end of their choosing. This force, unlike others, chooses when to end the war for them when their enlistment comes. What they are choosing to do we need to understand. They are choosing to reenlist at numbers greater than any other area of the military. Why can't this body sit down and think for a moment; what do they see about this war that I don't see? Why do they keep leaving their families and going to a dangerous place time and time again, in numbers larger than any other group in the military? Do you know why they do it? I think they do it because they interact with the judges I have just described to you. They see hope. They understand the enemy. They know an enemy that will take a 5-year-old child and put that child in front of their parents, douse him with gasoline and set him on fire, is an enemy to their family. They understand that Iran is trying to drive us out of Iraq because they want to be stronger. And they understand that will mean they are likely to have to fight a bigger war. From the troops' perspective, from my view, they want to come home, and they want a lot of things; but they want, above all others, the chance to win a war they believe they can win and one we cannot afford to lose. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Webb amendment. I guess if I can pick up where my colleague from New Jersey left off, what is the best thing for the Congress to do in terms of supporting our troops? What are our duties? What are our obligations? I would argue the worst thing the Congress can do at a time of war is to start taking over operational control of deployments. Many of us are up for reelection next year. This Iraq war has become one big political commercial. There are commercials being run out there--I don't know if they are on the air right at this moment, but every time there is a vote in this body, a Republican in a tough State will have an ad run in their State saying: Senator so-and-so has voted six times not to withdraw from Iraq. There are political commercials being run around every policy debate we have regarding this war. This is a political consultant's dream, this war. Well, this war is not about the next election; this war is about generations to come. The commercials will keep coming. Every time we have a vote like this, somebody is going to take a work product, turn it into a political ad, and try to get some political momentum from the dialog we have on the floor. None of us question each other's patriotism. That is great. To those who have served in combat, my hat is off to you. But we all have our independent obligation to make our own decisions here, and those who have never worn the uniform, you are just as capable of understanding this issue as I think anybody else. If you have been to Iraq, you understand how tired people are. They are tired. If you visit the military on a regular basis, you know they are stressed. Let me give my colleagues some numbers here. The 1st Cavalry Division, their retention rates are 135 percent; The 25th ID, 202 percent; the 82nd Airborne, 121 percent retention rates. Recruiting and retention is very good because people who are in the fight now understand the consequences of the fight and they don't want to lose. I was in Baghdad on July 4. We had 680-something people reenlist in theater. The troops are tired. That is not the problem. They understand the war. They understand the enemy because they deal with the enemy face- to-face, day-to-day. They realize that if we don't get this right--and in spite of the mistakes we have made, we can still get it right--if at the end of the day we don't get it right in Iraq, their kids are going to go back. The No. 1 comment I get from the troops after having been there many times is: I want to do this, Senator Graham, so that my children do not have to come over here and fight this war. Let's get it right now. Well, let's help them get it right. I think we are not helping them if the Congress mandates troop rotations that will undercut the ability for the surge to continue. Everyone cares about the troops, but the politics of this amendment are such that it would get--the bill would be vetoed. The President has said that if this amendment gets to be part of the underlying Defense authorization bill, he would veto it. I think any President would veto this bill. The Secretary of Defense's letter to me is a chilling rendition of what would happen to the force if this amendment was adopted. So we know the Defense authorization bill would get vetoed, and all the good things in it we do agree on--about MRAPs, support for the troops, better health care--all that gets lost. Now, why are we doing this? Some people have a very serious concern that the force is stressed, and they want to take pressure off the force by giving them as much time at home as they have in the theater. Some people want to use this amendment to make sure the surge can't go forward because that would be the effect of it. People are all over the board. The consequence to the Defense authorization bill is it would get vetoed over this provision. Now, if that is what my colleagues want to happen, this is a way to make sure it happens. The idea of telling the Department of Defense how long someone can stay in combat once they are trained and ready to go to the fight is probably the most ill-advised thing any Congress could do in any war. The Congress is a political body that is driven, appropriately, by the moment, by the next election, the voices of constituents, concerns of the public. Wars are not fought that way. Decisions in wars are not poll-driven--I hope. Decisions of politicians appropriately incorporate political consequences to the Member. Let's not make military policy based on the political consequence to the Member of Congress. That is what you would be opening a can of worms to. If we take on this responsibility of managing troops from a congressional point of view, setting their rotation schedules, how many can go and how long they can go, then their presence in whatever battlefield or theater we are talking about in the future is very much tied to the political moment back home. Think about that. If we begin to adopt this way of managing a war where the Congress takes this bold, unknown step of saying: You can only go in theater this long and you can't do A and you can't do B, but you can do C, what happens in the next war? Is it wise for political people who worry about their own reelection--which is an appropriate, rightful thing to be worried about if you are in politics--to have this much power? Is it good for the military for the Congress--535 people--to have this much power over military deployments? Our Constitution gives them a political Commander in Chief--a single person--who has to answer to the public at the ballot box. The Congress can, as part of our constitutional responsibilities, terminate any war because our constitutional role allows us to fund wars. So to my colleagues on the other side and those on this side who want to support this amendment, you would be doing the country a service and eventually, I think, the troops a service by trying to stop this war by cutting off funding, if that is your goal. If you think the war is lost and you believe it is the biggest foreign policy mistake in a generation and that it is a hopeless endeavor and that Iraq will never get any better, then just come to the floor and offer an amendment on the appropriations bill to say we will not continue to fund this war and create an orderly withdrawal. If you do that, I will disagree with you, but you will have followed a constitutional path that is well charted, and if you believe all the things I have just said, you will be doing the troops a great service because you will not create a precedent in the future where some other politician may take up your model and use it in a way you never envisioned. Once we legitimize politicians being able to make rotation deployment schedule decisions, once we go down that road, we have opened up Pandora's box where the politics of the next war could dramatically affect the ability to operate on the battlefield. If we limit our actions to cutting off funding, that will be a sustainable way for Congress to engage in terms of wars they believe have been lost. Now, the majority leader, Harry Reid, said the war was lost in April and the surge has failed. If you really believe that, let's have a debate not about micromanaging troop schedules and deployment schedules; let's have a debate that would be worthy of this Congress and this Nation. Let's come back onto the floor and put an amendment on the desk to be considered that would end the war by stopping funding for the war. That is not going to happen. The reason that is not going to happen is because the surge has been somewhat successful and the politics of ending this war--everybody is trying to hedge their bet a little bit now. The politics of the next election are affecting the politics of this body when it comes to war policy in a very unhealthy way. We have a side-by-side alternative to Senator Webb that puts congressional voice behind the idea that we would like the policy of Secretary Gates to be implemented of ensuring the dwell time at home is consistent with the amount of time one is in theater. It is a sense-of-the-Senate that gives voice to Secretary Gates's goal and policy of dwell time without retreating into the Commander in Chief's functions, without getting out of our constitutional lane. Senator McCain has introduced this side-by- side. It will be called up at an appropriate time, and I can talk about it later on. It is a sense-of-the-Congress where we all agree that it would be a great policy to have if the conditions on the ground would warrant it, to give our troops a little bit of rest. But what our troops need more than anything else is a commander who knows what he is doing and who can carry out his mission unimpeded by a bunch of politicians who are scrambling to get an advantage over each other. This whole debate is unseemly. It is destructive to our constitutional system. It brings out the worst in American politics. You have an ad being run against the very general in charge of our troops that is sickening and disgusting, and we are just absolutely going to a new low as a nation over this war. So if you think all the things I said before--the war is lost, hopeless, stupid; the worst decision ever made in terms of U.S. foreign policy--end the thing. End it. Cut off funding. Don't play this game of having 535 people become generals who have no clue of what they are talking about. I respect everybody in this body, and those who have served, I respect you, but there is not one person here who I think has anywhere close to the knowledge of General Petraeus in how to fight a war. You could dig up Audie Murphy, and he could come back and tell me to vote for this amendment, and I would respectfully disagree. To those who have been in battle: God bless you. You deserve all the credit and honor that comes your way. This is about winning a war we can't afford to lose. This is about who should run this war--a group of politicians who are scared to death of the electorate and who will embrace almost anything to get an advantage over the other, who is at 14 percent approval rating in the eyes of their fellow citizens? You want to scare the military? You want to give them something to be afraid of? Let them read in the paper Congress takes over operational control of Iraq. We would have some retention problems then. Anybody in their right mind would get out. There are a lot of choices to be made in our constitutional democracy about war and peace. The one choice we have never made before is to allow the Congress to set rotation schedules, deployment schedules, and if we do it now, not only will we hurt this war effort, we will make it impossible for future commanders and future Presidents to protect us.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I wish to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about what I think is a very important debate, and that is about Iraq war policy. Next week, I believe, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be coming to the Congress to brief us about the situation as they see it. I think most of us in the Senate are very anxious to hear what our Ambassador has to say and our leading general in Iraq. There are GAO reports about benchmarks. The idea that we are trying to evaluate performance and progress in Iraq is a good thing. Some of the benchmarks have not been met, apparently, some have. It depends upon how you measure. The one thing I would caution my colleagues to not forget is that the biggest benchmark is whether our presence in Iraq should be maintained in terms of our national security interests or should we leave. If we do leave, how does that affect our long-term security interests? I think the biggest issue facing each Senator is how they view the war in Iraq. This is a legitimate debate. There are two different ways of looking at the engagement in Iraq. Some Senators believe our military presence in Iraq at such levels is propping up the Iraqi Government; they are relying too much upon us, they are putting off the hard decisions because we are doing the fighting and they can kind of take their time, and that we should put more pressure on the Iraqi Government by beginning to withdraw troops. There is another view that any presence in Iraq is creating more terrorism than it is preventing, that our presence in Iraq is creating instability and problems for the Mideast as a whole, and that we should basically get our eye back on the ball, Afghanistan, al-Qaida operations in other areas. Those are a couple of views. I hope I fairly summarized it. I do not want to put words in people's mouths. But I think there are a couple of ways of looking at Iraq. There is another way. It is my way--it does not mean it is right, it is just the way I have come out on this--that Iraq, to me, is part of a global struggle, not just an isolated event. Whether we should have gone into Iraq is sort of a moot question. The question for the country is: What happens in Iraq in terms of our national security interests? Does it really matter? I would argue that the enemy we are facing in Iraq is threefold. There is sectarian violence within the country. There is Sunni-Shia violence, or people within the Shiia community using violence to try to get the upper hand politically. There are people, Sunni insurgents, who do not want to have a democracy. They do not want to have a representative government. They are trying to achieve power by the use of violence. So there is definitely some sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shias. That is very real. But there is also an element in Iraq called al-Qaida. Their goal is not to dominate the Shiia population in Iraq. Their goal is much broader. It is to make sure that representative government does not take hold in the Mideast in a way that would allow religious tolerance. Their goal is to make sure no representative government would spring up where a woman would have a say about her children. You know, we are all over the world militarily. You can see what is going on in Germany today. But al-Qaida chose to come to Iraq, I believe not because of what we are doing there or the fact that we are there, but because of what the Iraqi people may try to do. I do believe al-Qaida's international leadership has gone to Iraq to organize extremist forces within that country, religious extremists, because they fear more than anything else another Muslim nation, Islamic nation, Arab nation, being able to come together and live through representative democracy. That is why they are there. If they can defeat this effort at moderation, destabilize this government and drive us out, I think our worst days lie ahead. No matter how we wish to view Iraq, there is no doubt in my mind what that enemy would say, al-Qaida international would say: They beat America in the Land of the Two Rivers. Bin Ladin has called on all of those who believe as he does: Go to Iraq, join the fight, because now is the time to win a battle in the third world war and America must be defeated, not the Iraqi Shiia population but America. Now the Iranian involvement in Iraq. I have been on an 11-day tour over there as a Reserve lawyer. That was a wonderful experience, a very small contribution on my part. I learned how hard people work and how smart they are. I am awed by our military. I think every Senator shares that view. But one of the things I have learned from working on rule- of-law programs is how deeply involved the Iranian Quds force and other organizations are in funding militia groups. The question for us all is why should Iran be involved in trying to fund groups dedicated to killing Americans? The Lieberman amendment that passed without objection in the authorization debate in July was a damning indictment of the Iranian involvement in Iraq. The question must be asked and answered: Why? Why does Iran want to destabilize this government? Why are they supporting extremist groups, mostly in the Shia community but not exclusively, designed to kill Americans? Why are they providing aid and comfort to those groups who wish to destroy our forces? I argue they view Iraq as a threat, just as al-Qaida does, if the Iraqi Government is able to stabilize itself. The Sunni and Shia Arabs coming together, along with their Kurdish colleagues, to form a representative government that will allow the people to elect their leaders is the biggest threat to Iranian theocracy. They are involved in Iraq from their own self-interest, not the interests of the Iranian people, but the self-interest of the radical leadership within Iran. They understand clearly if Iraq is able to stabilize itself and create a moderate form of government, representative in nature, their nightmare just begins. That is why they are trying to drive us out. The President of Iran, a questionable character at best, said, I think, last week, they stand ready to fill the vacuum created when we leave. I argue that we need not leave a vacuum that Iran can fill. There are three enemies: al-Qaida, sectarian violence, and the Iranian elements trying to destabilize the Iraqi Government. One of the biggest problems we have had since the fall of Baghdad is we didn't have enough troops to provide security. After about five or six visits, it was clear to me that the situation was deteriorating in Iraq. Before the surge, I came back more depressed after each visit. The level of violence grew and the secure environment deteriorated. Now we have a new strategy. We have put more combat power in place. It has made a real difference on the security front. Anbar Province, the western part of Iraq where the Sunnis dominated 6 months ago, was declared lost. It was an al-Qaida safe haven. We have heard the story time and time again. The news of Anbar is not so much that we beat al- Qaida military, not so much that the Sunni Arabs turned on al-Qaida, joined the fight with us against al-Qaida. That is understandable given the way that al-Qaida treated the population in Anbar. What is the most exciting and encouraging is that in 2007 over 12,000 people have joined the local police force in Anbar. The sons of Anbar were called upon by the sheiks to take up arms by joining the police. This new police presence, once it is trained and equipped, will allow Anbar Province to be held by Iraqis. More encouraging than that, not only are people in Anbar beginning to join institutions that would allow al-Qaida to be defeated in a permanent fashion, they are beginning to reach out to Baghdad, and there is a movement going on between the Maliki government and leadership in Anbar to try to find a relationship where Baghdad is seen by the people of Anbar as a place you can do business. There is a lot of money being spent now by the central government on rule-of-law projects in Anbar. There is an old palace of one of the sons of Saddam that is going to be converted into a legal center where you can have terrorism courts, basic civil trials. You will have housing for judges that will be secure so they won't be assassinated. You will have a police training center there. There is a lot going on in terms of a relationship between Baghdad and Anbar that could lead to reconciliation. It is very true the political progress we had hoped for at the national level has not yet transpired. But what has astounded me is the amount of local reconciliation going on. Better security has led to better choices. People now feel more secure. They are telling us where al-Qaida operatives are hiding. They are giving us more information than we have ever received before about how al-Qaida operates, and other extremist groups. People are getting more confident to speak out. More than anything else, they are just war weary. The one thing I have learned on this trip that was more abundant than any other is that Iraqis at the local level, in provinces all over the country, are very war weary. They are trying to bring the country together, their local communities together. They are tired of the killing and the dying. So as we listen to what Ambassador Crocker has to say, and General Petraeus, we should be mindful of the challenges. To me, the successes are obvious, but the challenges are equally obvious. I never said, for the last 3\1/2\ years before the surge, that things were going great in Iraq because, to me, they weren't. Things were getting worse. It was obvious they were. But I do see a turnaround. I think the surge has accomplished some things militarily that have led to better choices, and there is an effort to reconcile the country from the bottom up. It is very real. The big pressure being applied to Baghdad is not what Senator Graham says or what any other Senator from the United States may say about the Maliki government. The pressure I see on the ground is coming from the people themselves. The people are war weary. They would like their representatives in Baghdad to come together and create a stability that they haven't known for 4 years. I am hopeful there will be political breakthroughs. Sunday a week ago the five major players in Iraq recommitted themselves to a plan to come back together, reform the government, and reconcile the Iraqi people, passing major legislation. Debaathification, the ability of Sunnis to hold jobs in the government, is a big piece of legislation that would transform Iraq. Local elections, allowing local people to pick their governors and representatives rather than Baghdad politicians making those appointments, if there were local elections, the Sunnis would participate in large numbers. In 2005, they boycotted the election. Now they are ready to engage in politics. I predict that based on the success of the surge militarily, the efforts of local reconciliation are real, that they are going to move up to the national level, and soon, very soon, we will have some breakthroughs in Baghdad in terms of political benchmarks that will transform the country. That is my hope, my desire. The way we can achieve that is to pour it on, continue the surge, let it run its course. It has been in place now, I think, since April. Let's keep pouring it on militarily, politically, and economically. We have the enemy on the mat. Let's don't let them up. Morale is sky high. Now is the time for America to exercise good judgment, long-term thinking, and reinforce Iraq instead of withdrawal. The message to withdraw, no matter how well intended, will not push Iraqi politicians to do anything faster. It will encourage an insurgency that is not being diminished. Those are the issues that face the Senate as we await news from Iraq. Let's concentrate on the long term. The year 2008 will be here before we know it, but the decisions we make about Iraq will have consequences long after the election of 2008. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Matt Guenther, a military fellow in my office, be accorded the privilege of the floor for the duration of the 110th Congress.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the Finance Committee's proposal reauthorizing the SCHIP program for 5 years is funded by a permanent tobacco tax increase. That is a $35.2 billion expansion of SCHIP, which is above the $25 billion in the baseline budget. The money for this comes from a cigarette tax increase of 61 cents to $1 per pack. There will be a tax increase on cigars by 53 percent, with the sales price up to $10 per cigar. Despite being a 5-year reauthorization, the tax part of it goes in perpetuity. So it is a very simple amendment. When the program itself is sunset to be reviewed, let's sunset the tax part of it to be reviewed. That is all it is. If you are going to sunset the program, sunset the tax increases and make an intelligent decision at that point.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I move to waive the applicable points of order under the Congressional Budget Act with respect to the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, we will be there at the committee tomorrow, and I will yield the remainder of my time so we can get on with other business.

Mr. GRAHAM. No. But I am aware of an effort to get Judge Southwick replaced with another person more acceptable to the Democratic majority and, basically, to take away from the President the ability to nominate a well-qualified person for this slot and, basically, neutralize the two Mississippi Senators, who I think have chosen wisely. I think that is politics that is dangerous for us to play, and I wish we would not do it.

Mr. GRAHAM. As I understand it, the problem with Judge Southwick is that it appears there has been some effort to try to get the Mississippi Senators to nominate someone else. And there has been the suggestion he could be a district judge but we want someone else to be the court of appeals nominee. I do not think that is a process we should engage in. So there are a lot of politics behind this nomination. We should not allow that to happen. We should not basically hold hostage the ability of the Senators from Mississippi and the President to put someone forward. If we think they are not qualified, vote them down. But playing politics, trying to change the nominating process, I do not think is kosher. And I think that is what is going on.

Mr. GRAHAM. All right.

Mr. GRAHAM. Absolutely.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM. I believe he was, yes. I believe so.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM. Absolutely. I will be glad to. I do not want to infringe on the 5 minutes. But the bottom line, I guess to my good friend from Illinois, is, I do not think this is about qualifications at all. I think this man has lived a good life in the law and seems to be a good person, from what I understand from everyone who has spoken on his behalf. It is not a question about a character flaw or a lack of legal ability. It is about two cases. As Senator Specter said, one case involved a racial slur that is a horrible term. The administrative review board, which took up that matter--should the person be fired because of this racial slur--found it was not a repeated event--under Mississippi law, it has to be more than an isolated event--it did not disrupt the workplace, there was an apology made and accepted, and the board found that this was not sufficient to terminate the person. It went to the Mississippi Court of Appeals, and they, under Mississippi law, had to determine whether the administrative review board made an arbitrary and capricious decision, whether there is any evidence to support the court's finding, and they upheld the court's determination. Judge Southwick, in that case, commented many times about how offensive the word was, and there is no place in society for this word to be used without it being considered to be offensive. But judges have to apply the law, not emotions. I guess the question I have is, is there any belief on anyone's part that his concurrence in this upholding of the administrative review board suggests that he, as a person, is racially biased? Does this suggest he is defective as a person, that he harbors animosity against one group or another? I do not think anybody can reasonably conclude that. Judges sometimes have to be involved in emotional decisions. If people want to march through Jewish communities holding the Nazi flag, that is horrible, but under the law that is allowed on certain occasions. The second case is about the term ``homosexual lifestyle.'' It was a custody case, and he was in an appellate review situation. That term was used in the underlying decision by the judge in terms of custody, but that term has been used in many other cases throughout the country in different jurisdictions. I guess my question is, do you take these two cases, where he concurred, to say there is something wrong with him? Did he do something out of the mainstream of the law? And does it show that he, Judge Southwick, is somehow not the type person you would want to sit in judgment of your case or your family? I think what we are doing to him is incredibly unfair. There is no real evidence at all this man, as a person, harbors animosity against one group versus the other. Quite to the contrary, from everything I see in the record, he has been a very decent, scholarly man who has applied the law in an admirable fashion. So I wish we could allow an up-or-down vote on this fine fellow. I will yield for a question.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I will try to be brief. I appreciate the recognition. I wish to speak very briefly on the matter pending before the Senate. The whole idea of the confirmation process of judges has taken a kind of wrong turn for many years now. There is plenty of blame to go around from both parties. But one thing I wish to have happen in the Senate-- for the good of the country--is to make sure when well-qualified people come before this body, they are put through their paces about their qualifications, their abilities, their disposition, their demeanor, inquiring as to how they think and what drives their thinking, but, at the same time, understanding that our job is to confirm people who are sent over by the President--elections do matter--and that when we look at a nominee, we part the politics of the last election, of the next election, and focus on the individual who will serve for a lifetime. It is important to understand the nominee before this body, Mr. Southwick, has been serving as a judge in Mississippi since 1995. As Senator Specter indicated, he has been involved in thousands of decisions in a concurring role, and he has offered hundreds of decisions. He joined the military, and volunteered, as a lieutenant colonel to go serve in Iraq at the age of 52. The American Bar Association unanimously considered him well qualified, saying very glowing things about his temperament, his disposition. This is someone who has been looked at by people outside of politics and found to be extremely well qualified.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. GRAHAM. No, I was not. It is my understanding there was no objection on your side about him being a district court judge. Is that correct?