John Kerry

Mr. KERRY

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am going to speak, obviously, a little bit in an abbreviated fashion at this point, and then I will reserve time and speak again later because of the way things have worked out. I want to thank the Senator from Wisconsin. I want to thank him for his foresight and his leadership with respect to this issue, and I also want to thank him for his cooperation and efforts in the last days to put together what I think is a reasonable and sensible approach to how we deal with an obviously complicated situation. Let me say that I have heard this debate over the course of the last days and I have listened carefully and I am saddened, in a sense--but I guess I have grown to expect it in the course of our politics--that there is an awful lot of characterization going around, an awful lot of stereotype sloganeering which tries to characterize something as other than what it is. It is what we have come to. The fact is that this amendment is not what it is being characterized as. I have heard a number of people say it is a precipitous withdrawal. I have heard obviously the words ``cut and run'' and other words used many times. Let me first point out the differences between this and the other amendment that has already been debated. First of all, this is binding. The other amendment is a sense of the Senate, and our troops and our country deserve more than a sense of the Senate. They deserve a policy. Secondly, we have a date; the other is open-ended. It is almost like what President Bush is doing. We are going to stay the course and be open-ended. Thirdly, this has an over-the-horizon force specifically to protect the security interests of the United States of America in the region and with respect to Iraq. But in addition to that, this amendment specifically strengthens the national security of the United States. It is not an abandonment of Iraq; it is, in fact, a way of empowering Iraq to stand up on its two feet and for the Iraqis to be able to do what they have expressed their desire to do, which is have their sovereignty. It is interesting. In the last day we had a huge debate about the sovereignty of Iraq, and colleague after colleague came down and said how important it is to respect the sovereignty of Iraq. Well, this amendment respects the sovereignty of Iraq. In fact, it increases the sovereignty of Iraq. It provides specifically for three provisos under which the President has the ability to be able to lead troops. There is no abandonment of Iraq. It sets a date by which, over the course of the next year, the Iraqis themselves have said they have the ability to be able to take over their own security. Prime Minister Maliki said a few days ago that by the end of this year--December--in 16 out of 18 provinces, they will be able to take care of their own security. This amendment holds them accountable. In addition to that, it provides for the ability of the President to maintain a minimal number of forces who are critical to the job of standing up Iraqi security forces, of conducting targeted and specialized counterterrorism operations like the kind that got Zarqawi and also protecting United States facilities and personnel. So even when you reach the date of next year--ample enough time for the Iraqis to complete the task of standing up--it will be 4 years, Mr. President, next year, and I think the American people have a right to expect that after 4 years, soldiers who have been trained over the course of those years are prepared to stand up for their country. In the United States of America, when we send a marine recruit to Pendleton or to Quantico, we can tell you in a matter of months when that recruit is ready for deployment. When we send a pilot to Corpus Christi or Pensacola, we can tell you exactly when they are ready to deploy. Is this administration telling us that after 4 years, we don't have Iraqis who are trained enough to drive trucks and perhaps be blown up by an IED, rather than an American soldier? Are they telling us they are not going to be prepared enough to be able to stand up for the security of Iraq? This amendment demands the same kind of accountability that the President was prepared to demand each step of the way of the Iraqis up until this point. We set a date for the transfer of the provisional Government. They said: Oh, we can't do it that fast. We said: You have to do it that fast, and we did it. We then set a date for the Constitution and the referendum. Some Senators, some of whom have spoken against this amendment, came out and said: Oh, I think it is too early. I don't think we ought to have that date. Many of us stood up and said: No, we have to hold the date and hold them to the date. Guess what. We did it. We held them to the date and we got the Constitution. The same thing happened for both elections. A lot of people came up and said: Oh, we can't get this all together on time; we have to delay the election. We said: No, we are going to stick with the election date, and we did. General Casey himself has said that the large presence of American troops is lending to the occupation, the sense of occupation, and it is delaying the willingness of Iraqis to stand up. It is human nature. Anybody who has to go out and take the risk of loss of life, if somebody else is there to do it for you, you stand back. The fact is, countless numbers of conservative voices, including people like Bill Buckley, have suggested that the time has come for American forces to leave. He happens to believe, as others do, that it is lost. I think there is nothing in this amendment at all that, as some colleagues have said, that some people have decided it is all lost. I do not believe that. I believe this is the way you empower the Iraqi Government, with its own people. This is the way you have accountability for what they need to achieve in the next year. This is the way you require their forces to take on responsibilities they may be reluctant to do today. And it allows for the President to make a determination that the job is not quite done and we can address the troops that may be necessary to complete that task. That is anything but abandonment. I have heard some people say there is no plan. There is more plan here than there is in any other approach to what is happening in Iraq. Why do I say that? Again, listen to our own generals. General Casey and others have all said that the reality is that this war cannot be won militarily. Our own commanding general is saying to us: You can't win it militarily. Secretary Condoleezza Rice has said it can't be won militarily, it must be won politically. Our soldiers have done their job. Our soldiers have won the part of the war they need to win. They have given the Iraqi people a government. They have given the Iraqi people several elections. They have given them a constitution. Now it is time for Iraqis to stand up and want democracy for themselves as much as we want it for them. The best way to guarantee that is going to happen is to set a date with a proviso that the three things that we still need to do can still be done: make sure they are trained, continue to fight al-Qaida, and protect American forces and American facilities. All of that is provided for in this amendment. This has been quoted a couple of times out here today, but let me remind my colleagues what the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister has said, himself, in ``The Way Out of Iraq, A Roadmap.'' The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors who have, to date, been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance to what they call the coalition occupation. That is the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Iraq, telling us that withdrawing American troops will, in fact, help them provide order in the streets of Iraq. The Senator from Virginia and I were in Iraq together. Nobody works harder in the Senate at protecting our security than he does. I respect him, and he knows he is my friend. He knows as well as others know here that what General Casey said is true. There is no military solution to what is happening in Iraq. You either resolve the differences between Shia and Sunni and provide for an adequacy of the differences that are fueling the insurgency or the insurgency will continue. There are five different components of that insurgency. There are outright criminals, and there is organized crime. There is al-Qaida. You have the Baathists, who have one attitude about regaining power. And, of course, you have the insurgents who are different from the Baathists, who are hardcore. Those are different elements that are going to have to be resolved in different ways. I ask any of my colleagues, where is the diplomacy necessary to deal with this? What we do in this is require the kind of diplomatic effort that, in fact, is a plan to resolve all of the problems that are outstanding in Iraq: the problems with respect to governments bordering the country, the problems with respect to Shia and Sunni, the problems with the divisions of royalties of oil, how do you protect the rights of Sunnis in the minority, what is the degree of federalism that will exist in the government. These are the reasons for the insurgency. At this moment, I don't see the kind of effort I have seen historically, whether it was from Henry Kissinger in the Middle East with shuttle diplomacy, in Vietnam, or Jim Baker in his efforts to put together a major coalition with respect to Desert Storm--that doesn't exist today. So a policy to say ``stay the course'' is a policy to say you are not going to resolve those issues. It is a policy to hope that somehow the Iraqis will pull their act together. It is a policy that is based on more wishful thinking than on real policy changes that address the question of shifting responsibility. When the Prime Minister of Iraq can tell us that they can manage 16 out of 18 provinces within a year, when 87 percent of the Iraqis are polled and say they think we ought to set a date for withdrawal of American troops, when 94 percent of the Sunnis say we ought to withdraw, when 90 percent of the Shias say we ought to withdraw, we ought to listen to the Iraqis. After all the talk in the last days about sovereignty, where is that respect for sovereignty? I have more to say about why it is important for us to take this effort here. The long list of mistakes that have been made do not inspire confidence in the judgments made by this administration. Congress helped to get us into this war. Congress needs to take on responsibility for helping to get us out of it. I had a lot more to say, and I have a lot more to say, but because of the way this is working, this will be truncated. I know I only have about a minute left so I reserve the remainder of the time, and we will go through the process and come back.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, can I inquire how much time remains?

Mr. KERRY. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. KERRY. But I would be delighted to answer any questions.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I wonder if it will be possible to let the Senator from New Jersey speak for about 15 minutes and then I resume the floor?

Mr. KERRY. I understand I have unlimited time at this time, Mr. President? There is no time limit on me?

Mr. KERRY. I just yield him 15 minutes. I don't intend to talk all night, but I hope to have the chance to speak.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey for a really excellent summary and a terrific statement about what this is about and what is at stake. I thank him also for in the short time he has been here he has really proven to be indispensable for a number of different debates we have had and for his work in the last few days on no amnesty for those who have killed Americans. It had a major impact on our policy. We thank him so much for that contribution. Mr. President, I think one of the important things that the Senator from New Jersey just said is let us remember what this amendment is really about. I have sat here and listened to this nondebate for a little while. When Senators used to be able to question each other, we used to be able to have a dialog on the floor. It seems to me that is the best way to test each other's thinking. What is interesting to me is that a number of Senators came to the floor to make these grand pronouncements about our country, about war on terror, about our troops. And none of us in the U.S. Senate would disagree that our troops are the best troops in the world and that they have made an extraordinary sacrifice. None of us would disagree. We are a great country and a great democracy. None of us disagree that we don't need to fight against terrorists to win the war on terror. That is not the issue. A lot of other people are getting tired of that sort of game, of trying to characterize things as they aren't. The Senator from South Dakota said that we shouldn't telegraph to the enemy and to the terrorists. Of course, we shouldn't telegraph to the enemy and terrorists. What are we telegraphing? We are there. They know it. They are killing our soldiers to some degree but lesser than the insurgency today. The point that people need to really focus on is the fact that what has happened in Iraq is not what was originally billed. This is the third war. It is a different war from the war we went into. The war that the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions, described was the war against Saddam Hussein as an enforcement mechanism of weapons of mass destruction. And they weren't there. There is a whole history of that being about a war of choice as opposed to a war of necessity. That then transitioned because Zarqawi and company and a bunch of foreigners were attracted by the fact that we were there. We made a great target. So they started to use that target. And, indeed, it became a haven for some terrorists. But every single analyst who I have talked to--and I know the chairman knows this--says that there are about 1,000 or less of the foreign terrorists in Iraq. Ninety-eight percent of what is happening in Iraq today is Iraqi on Iraqi. When they come to the floor and say to us we are going to telegraph something to the terrorists, who are we telegraphing something to? The Shias who hate Sunnis, the Sunnis who hate Shias who are killing each other? What are our troops supposed to be about? Drive down the street and find an IED and get blown up? Wait for a suicide bomber to come into an outpost and kill them? The bottom line is that either the Iraqis are going to resolve the differences between Iraqis or we are going to see people dying for a long, long time. When we talk about the war on terror, let's talk about the real war on terror which never was in Iraq. Yes, it is now part of the war on terror. It has been made part of the war on terror because foreign terrorists have been attracted there because the American target is there and because they know they can feed into the sectarian violence and use it against us. What is smart if you are going to try to deal with that? How do you win? Do you think I want to win any less than the Senator from Alabama or the Senator from Georgia? I believe in winning. I believe in winning for America and I believe in winning for our troops, and I don't think this is a winning strategy. It is not a winning strategy in Iraq, and it is not a winning strategy in the war on terror. All you have to do is look at al-Qaida and what they are doing in 60 to 80 countries around the world. Look at what happened in Somalia the other day? Are we dealing with that? Are we dealing with Darfur? Are we dealing with North Korea? It took us until this year to sit down with our own allies, Great Britain, Germany and France, and actually try to do the diplomatic work of dealing with Iran. For 3\1/5\ years we sat on the sidelines and allowed Iran to become more of a problem. Is that winning the war on terror? What about the 60 percent of the kids in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan and other countries that are under the age of 25, 50 percent under the age of 18, 40 percent under the age of 14, and the unemployed and uneducated and unemployable? They are going to go down to madrasas and learn how to hate people while the United States remains a big, fat target in the Middle East. Ask our foreign policy experts. I don't know whether it was Foreign Affairs or another magazine, but one of them did that just the other day. Eighty-seven percent of the people, when asked, said we are less safe today in the war on terror than we were; 87 percent of the experts of the United States, including people like General Brent Scowcroft and others who I know the chairman has great respect for. This is not a question of whether we want to beat terrorists. This is a question of whether we are doing it the right way and whether we know how to do this right. Show me in this resolution, in this amendment, where it says all troops out in 1 year. It doesn't. A lot of people are upset at that. They think it ought to, but it doesn't. Show me where it says we are finished altogether, and we are walking away from Iraq. It does not say it. It says we are going to leave sufficient people there to finish the training, to go after al-Qaida, over the horizon to have the capacity to be able to protect our interests in the region, and it says we will protect American facilities. This is not cut and run. This is a smart way to win the war on terror. Our own generals--and I know the chairman has heard it; I know others have heard it--know that they believe our presence is contributing to the problems. It contributes to the sense of occupation. It contributes to the--whether it is Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay or Haditha, those all contribute to the recruitment of terrorists against the United States. Our intelligence people will tell every Member of the Senate that currently there are al-Qaida-trained operatives leaving Iraq, trained in munitions, trained in IEDs, going to Europe and elsewhere in order to wreak the havoc of the future. We are not doing the job. We are not doing the job correctly. Let's have a real debate, not a false debate, about something this resolution is not. Moreover, in listening to my colleagues, one of them talked about what his vote meant and the vote he casts to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. I remember what my vote was. I remember what I said in the Senate when I voted. I voted reluctantly based on what Colin Powell, Secretary of State, and others said they were going to do: Exhaust the remedies of inspections at the United Nations, not cut them short; go to war as a last resort, not as a rush; do the adequate planning, not ignore the State Department plan for what you do to win the peace. I hear colleagues come to the Senate and say: We shouldn't tell this administration what to do. Their record demands that we tell them what to do. Congress helped get us into this mess, and Congress ought to help get us out of it. We are partly responsible. I have heard my colleagues talk about troops they talk to. We all talk to troops. We have all talked to families. I will be honest about it, I hear both things. I hear troops whose families have said to me: Make sure my son or daughter did not die in vain. I agree with what the Senator from Wisconsin said earlier about that. I think anyone who serves their country at the call of the Nation never dies in vain. I have heard troops who have come back and said to me: We are making progress. We ought to be doing more of this, more of that, more of the PRTs, more of a number of different other projects. But I have also met a lot of troops who are coming back who believe they do not know what the mission is; they think the war is wrong and they think a lot of the troops just want to come home. That is where they are. It is a mixture. Our question, our judgment, is to try to see through that, try to be intelligent and genuine in trying to work out what is the best policy. I have come to the conclusion that the reason for setting a date--I was not there 2 years ago. Why wasn't I there 2 years ago? Because 2 years ago we didn't have all the elections, we did not have a referendum, we did not have the Constitution, we did not have an elected government, we had not made some of the progress, and we had not transitioned to a civil sectarian struggle. We then still saw things as fundamentally foreign jihadists. Because of all the mistakes that have been made, that transition is now a matter of history. I believe deeply, based on what I am hearing from military personnel, based on what I see personally, and based on my own experience where I fought with foreigners in another country, where we were trying to stand them up and get them to go out and do the job, that as long as we are there and prepared to do the job for them, they won't do it adequately. You have to push people out into that kind of situation. The bottom line, can we do it the way we are muddling along? Possibly. I heard a couple of colleagues come to the Senate and say there were some who have decided that this is lost and we just have to go. I haven't. I believe there are ways, hopefully, to pull something together that has a sufficiently stable government that we can go forward to the other issues of the Middle East. I will tell you this, and this I know for certain: If we make this successful muddling along, as we are doing now, it is going to cost us more lives, more limbs, and more dollars than if we did what is in this plan. That I know to a certainty. I also know to a certainty that unless we are prepared to do the diplomacy necessary, we cannot resolve the fundamental underpinnings of this insurgency. I talked to General Zinni the other day to ask his advice. He doesn't agree with me setting a date, so I will be upfront about that, but he certainly cited unbelievable dismay at the lack of adequacy of consultation in the region, at the lack of effort to put together a regional security arrangement, at the lack of diplomacy that is trying to resolve the fundamental differences and work bilaterally in an intensive way to pull people to the table to try to deal with this. One thing I know, when you have a 20-percent minority Sunni population who for 200 years has run the country and now suddenly they are not, but some of them are still committed to doing it, if you do not give them a sufficient stake, you are not going to resolve this problem. And, at the same time, you have the Shias who are 60 percent of the population who for 200 years have been oppressed by this 20 percent minority, and they won at the ballot box because we gave them at the ballot box the opportunity to have power, and they want to hold on to it. That is natural. But if they want to go the full distance of what they want to do, we have a serious long-term problem. That is what we are supposed to resolve in the next few months. The Senator from Delaware is absolutely correct in his description of the tensions that have to be resolved. I disagree with the Senator with respect to the question of whether there is a plan. This amendment is a plan. It is a plan for standing up the Iraqis. It is a plan for creating accountability. It is a plan for shifting responsibility to the Iraqi Government to bolster their sovereignty and empower the Government in the eyes of the Iraqi people. It is a plan for how to begin to redeploy troops to protect our interests in the region at the same time as you stand up their military. And, most importantly, it is a plan for what you do with the Arab League, with the Secretary General of the United Nations, with the neighbors and with the factions in Iraq in order to resolve the fundamental differences. It specifically requires reaching a comprehensive political agreement for Iraq that engenders the support of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds and ensures equitable distribution of oil, strengthens the internal security, disbans militias, revives reconstruction efforts, fulfills related international economic aid commitments, secures Iraq's borders, and provides for a sustainable Federalist structure in Iraq. That is a plan. And the only way to arrive at any plan, whether it is the Senator from Delaware or anyone else, is to pull the parties together and do the diplomacy necessary. Never in the 21 years I have been here have I seen as significant an issue of war and peace, life and death, as significant an absence of fundamental diplomacy as there is here. Never. It does not come close to the efforts of other generations. There is 200 years of American history being turned topsy-turvy. It is hurting us on the war on terror. When September 11 happened, the whole world was with us--the whole world. Newspaper headlines said: We are all Americans now. That was the atmosphere after September 11. And the whole world understood why we had to go to Afghanistan. And every single one of us voted for that, understood it, and supported it. But Iraq is different. Iraq had nothing to do with Afghanistan at the time, nothing to do with September 11, and everyone knows it. So why are we here talking about requiring this administration to do something? Why don't you think about the history. When they could have demanded and relied on accurate information instead of manipulated intelligence, they made a willful choice not to do that. They were wrong. Instead, they sacrificed American credibility at home and abroad. The result of that is the ``We are all Americans now'' was squandered. It disappeared. Ask any American citizen who travels abroad now how comfortable they feel as they travel. Ask any American businessman what happens to them when they travel in other parts of the world. When this administration could have given the inspectors additional time to discover whether Saddam Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction, when they could have taken time to exhaust the patience of our own allies and hold them accountable to the U.N. resolutions, instead they just broke off and said, OK, you go your way, we will go ours, and they exposed America to greater cost and greater sacrifice. When they could have paid attention to Ambassador Wilson's report, they chose not to. And they were wrong. Instead, they attacked him and they attacked his wife to justify attacking Iraq. But the mistakes were not limited to that decision to invade. They mounted, one upon the other. When they could have listened to General Shinseki and put in enough troops to maintain order, they chose not to. When they could have listened to Larry Lindsey and others who said it is going to cost $200 billion, they not only chose not to listen, they fired him. They were wrong. When they could have learned from George Herbert Walker Bush, Jim Baker and General Scowcroft and built a genuine world coalition, they chose not to. And they were wrong. When they could have implemented a detailed State Department plan for reconstructing post-Saddam Iraq, they chose not to. And they were wrong. When they could have protected American forces by guarding Saddam Hussein's ammo dumps where there were weapons of individual destruction, they exposed our young men and women to the ammo that now maims and kills them because they chose not to act. And they were wrong. When they could have imposed immediate order and structure in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Secretary Rumsfeld shrugged his shoulders and said, ``Baghdad was safer than Washington, DC,'' and he chose not to act, he was wrong. When the administration could have kept an Iraqi Army selectively intact, they chose not to. And they were wrong. When they could have kept an entire civil structure functioning to deliver basic services to Iraqi citizens, guess what. They chose not to. And they were wrong, and we are paying the price today. They could have accepted the offers of the United Nations and individual countries to provide on-the-ground peacekeepers and reconstruction. Guess what. In their arrogance about doing it alone, they chose not to, and so we are alone. They were wrong. When they should have leveled with the American people that the insurgency had grown, they chose not to. Vice President Cheney even absurdly claimed that the insurgency was in its last throes, and he repeated that again just a few days ago. He was wrong. Now, after all these mistakes, the administration likes to accuse anyone who proposes a better course of wanting to cut and run. Well, Mr. President, we are in trouble today because of the policy of cut- and-run--cutting and running from common sense, cutting and running from history, cutting and running from cultural realities, cutting and running from the truth, cutting and running from the best advice of our military. And we are paying a huge price for that today. Mr. President, every single one of us is determined to win the war on terror. But we have to ask ourselves some tough questions about where we find ourselves today. I wonder, as we are told by a lot of people that--I think the President, just yesterday or the day before, said it was important to have Members of the U.S. Congress who will not wave the white flag of surrender in the war on terror. I think the President of the United States ought to stop acting as ``Campaigner in Chief'' and start being Commander in Chief and start bringing the Congress together and the Nation together around a real policy. I don't know anybody waving a white flag. We are debating whether or not there is a better way to win the war on terror. I respectfully say to my colleagues, if we don't begin to pay attention, instead of over $2 billion every couple of days--every 2 days, I think; it is about $8 billion a week; 8 billion bucks a week-- instead of $8 billion a week going to Iraq, we could be investing and working on a greater Middle Eastern initiative, working on economic development, working on schools, working on children's issues, working on a future with respect to future terrorists. The fact is, we are not going to succeed at this if all we do is go out there and alienate people. I have heard from soldiers over the last weekend. I was with three medics who have came back, and they are all against the war, those three medics. They are out there in America right now talking to people about why they are against the war. They said: When you go into a house at night, and you are holding guns, and you are scaring people in that house, and you leave that house, they don't like you. You are not winning their hearts and minds. I cannot tell you how familiar that is to the same experience we saw and went through years ago in hamlets throughout Southeast Asia. It just does not work the way they are doing it. We could ask the question, legitimately: How many lives have been lost because of the ineptitude of this strategy? How many lives have been lost? And how many people have been maimed and wounded because we did not provide the body armor to our troops? You want to talk about patriotism? How many troops were killed or wounded by the shells and the weapons that came from the ammo dumps that we were not smart enough to protect? How many lives have been lost and how many limbs have been amputated because there were not enough troops in the beginning in order to provide people with the support and safety and the control of the country? How much bigger and more dangerous is al-Qaida today because we outsourced the job of capturing him at Tora Bora to Afghans instead of using the First Marines or the 10th Mountain Division or even the SEALs who were there? We are where we are today in this war on terror because of misjudgments. And I believe those misjudgments continue. How many times have we heard that we are turning the corner or that this is a moment of turning the corner, and yet momentum was lost? Momentum was lost after the elections. Momentum was lost after the passage of the Constitution. Momentum was lost in the last months while we waited and waited and waited for Iraqi politicians to stop playing around and form a government. I do not think our soldiers deserve that interim period, personally. And the question now is, how do you best protect our troops? How do you best secure our objectives? How do you best deal with the problem of an Iraq where Iraqis need to defend their own rights and interests? Americans cannot do it for them. Yes, we can provide backup. Yes, we can provide insurance against a total implosion. Yes, we can provide security with respect to the efforts to go after al-Qaida. And our amendment contemplates all of that. But it also contemplates a transition based on experience. The Iraqis needed a deadline for the transfer of authority to the Provisional Government. The Iraqis needed a deadline for the Constitution. They needed a deadline for their elections. They needed a deadline for their own formation of a government. They even have a self-imposed deadline for the transition of the Constitution in these next months. Why then, when the Iraqis themselves are saying they can take over their security, when the Iraqi Government itself says withdrawing American troops would be helpful, would we not coordinate with the Iraqi Government a drawdown that makes it clear that we are standing them up? Now, speaking of the stand-up, I thought the policy of our Government--how many times have we heard it from the President: ``As they stand up, we will stand down.'' He announced that in a speech to the American people. He has announced it in press conferences. Well, here we are. In the trips I made to Iraq, General Petraeus, and his now successor, showed us charts that indicated 272,000 was the goal to train and equip. We are now at 264,600. That is as of June 14, 2006. The goal was 272,000. Now, I think they moved the goal out to 325,000. But notwithstanding, how many have stood down? If the goal is to stand down as they stand up, and we have stood up 264,000--incidentally, in addition to the 264,000, there are 144,000 facilities protection service personnel working in 27 ministries. So you have a total of almost 400,000 Iraqis trained and equipped. And where is the stand-down? I believe it is essential to accelerate this transition. That is the only way to reduce the targeting of our troops. It is the only way to invest other countries in the reality that the United States will not always be there, and they need to take a stake in their own region. Right now, because of the way they feel about this administration, and because we are simply there ``staying the course,'' they have no compulsion whatsoever to come to the table. The only way you are going to bring them to the table, in my judgment, is to change that equation. So we have a very significant, broad-based plan for an international diplomatic effort, beginning with bilateral, and working up, ultimately, through the bilateral to a summit that we know can be successful. That is the way in which we will invest in a new security arrangement for the region and protect the United States of America's long-term interests more effectively. Mr. President, I see that another colleague has come and would like to speak now. I just close by saying that----

Mr. KERRY. I would be delighted to do that.

Mr. KERRY. I would be happy to do so. I thank the distinguished chairman. Mr. President, I heard the Senator from South Dakota say that there are occasions when a generation faces a struggle between good and evil. I agree with that. There is good and there is evil in this world. And what radical fascist extremists are doing in the name of religion is evil. I know as well as anybody here in the Senate that we have to stand up to that. But we have to stand up to it in the best traditions and values of our country. We have to stand up to it in a way that brings people to our side and does not alienate them. It is incomprehensible to me that after these several years, where we started with ``we are all Americans'' post-9/11, and the world was at our side, that we have now seen radical, extreme terrorists isolate the United States of America in that particular part of the world. That is a failure of policy. And it is a failure that makes the United States of America less secure, not more. Some people have said: Well, if you tell the terrorists that we are leaving in a few days--whatever period of time--I remind them, we are not leaving altogether. We are going to leave our special forces personnel who are capable of taking out the terrorists. But the bottom line is that they are not waiting for anything today. We just lost two troops in the most brutal, horrible manner. They are not waiting now. And the fact is that unless we get Iraqis to resolve those issues I talked about, this will continue or even get worse. So ignoring all the warnings of history itself, in a moment of total ideological excess, this administration has managed to make the ancient cradle of civilization look a lot like Vietnam. I think there is a path forward. I think there is a better way to secure our interests. There is a better way to fight the war on terror. There is a better way to stand up to Iraq. There is a better way to respect their sovereignty. There is a better way to protect our troops. I hope the U.S. Senate will look carefully at that.

Mr. KERRY. I would be delighted. Mr. President, let me just say to the distinguished chairman, I don't have a question for him because he has not said anything outrageous.

Mr. KERRY. I said, the Senator from Virginia has not said anything outrageous that begs a question at this point. But I will say this: I do understand the difficulties that the manager was under.

Mr. KERRY. I know. But he had wanted more than 5 hours, as you know. We are where we are.

Mr. KERRY. And I think he had more speakers than he was able to fit in.

Mr. KERRY. Would the Senator not agree with me that the fundamental crisis of Iraq today is not particularly with Zarqawi having been killed and the treasure-trove of information we found--which, incidentally, happened because Iraqis gave Iraqis information and F-16s from outside came in and took him out. So there was an Iraqi component of that, which can still function with the setup that we are setting forward. But wouldn't the Senator agree, Mr. President, that the fundamental problem today is that 98 percent of the insurgency is Shia- Sunni, Sunni-Shia sectarian violence, militias within the military?

Mr. KERRY. Can I just finish the question? Would the Senator then not agree that there are serious limits on what our troops can do to resolve sectarian violence?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, that is a wonderful question and a very appropriate one. I really appreciate it. It gives me a chance to talk about the viability of this. First of all, may I remind the distinguished chairman what I just said a moment ago. We are at 264,000. We have 144,000 more. That is 400,000 people prepared to go. They are in the streets now. We have 1 year to continue to work with them. Prime Minister Maliki has said himself that by the end of this year, in 16 out of 18 provinces they will be able to take over security. This is contemplated within the framework that the Prime Minister himself has adopted. This respects their sovereignty. It respects their capacity. Secondly, in my conversations with leaders in the region, as recently as this year, ranging from the President of Egypt to the King of Jordan and others, what I gleaned from those conversations is, they are waiting for a series of kind of diplomatic and business conference efforts that do get them invested and invest the whole region in an understanding that the United States is going to be leaving, and they need to begin to accept that reality. The longer we stay, the longer we delay their readiness and their need--let alone willingness--to come to the table. I respectfully suggest that it is within the framework of a year. We did the Dayton Accords in less time. Milosevic did not want to come to the table. President Clinton persuaded Yeltsin to create a pressure point that brought people there. In effect, we made things happen against people's will by creating the pressure. This is the same kind of situation. I say respectfully to the Senator, we have a far better chance of spending less money, losing less lives and being more effective in the war on terror if we pursue this than if we simply do what we are doing today.

Mr. KERRY. And if that were the case, and they were prepared to come to the table to resolve these issues and be part of this process, then the President could come back to us and we would respond accordingly. We are not stupid. We want to act in the best interest of our country. The question is, how do you begin to push people to a place where they realize they have to confront these realities? Secondly, the Senator's question makes a presumption that I just fundamentally disagree with and don't see in this amendment. That is if we pull out the foundation, I think the Senator said, we specifically say we arrive at a schedule coordinated with the Government of Iraq, leaving only the minimal number of forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi forces. I have asked the Senator from Virginia, what are we there for? What are we there to do? We are there to fight al-Qaida. We allow for that. We are there to stand up Iraqis for themselves. We allow that. And we are certainly there to protect American facilities. So what is it that is absent from here that would somehow pull out the foundation from anything?

Mr. KERRY. Let me say to the Senator, I know he doesn't want American troops in the middle of a civil war. I know he doesn't think that that is why we sent our troops there.

Mr. KERRY. That is where they are.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, may I say respectfully, we will continue to be able to do that. Over the course of the next year, with over-the- horizon capacity and with our ability to move in an emergency, we are not going away. We have plenty of troops in Kuwait. We could have plenty of troops over the horizon. That is not going to fall apart. The problem is that the tasks that the Senator is referring to, each of them are civilian tasks. They are political tasks. You don't need 138,000 American troops as targets to complete those tasks when you have 400,000 Iraqis allegedly trained and equipped and prepared to defend their country. Let me ask the Senator: Did Iraq or did it not fight Iran for 10 years within the last 25 years?

Mr. KERRY. And they lost a million people fighting for almost 10 years for their country. These are the same people. Four years later we are still driving trucks down the street and our guys are taking IEDs. Are you telling me that they don't have people who can drive a truck? They don't have people to go out on patrol? Why aren't our people garrisoned and being held in reserve in case there is an implosion? What are we doing with our troops being the ones that have to go out? I don't get it. I believe there is a better way to wage this effort. That is what this amendment contemplates.

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, that is a legitimate question and it deserves, obviously, an answer. Those countries, many of them, are reluctant to become engaged with the United States as long as they see us on the status quo path, because they see the same series of mistakes that I have just cited. If you talk to them, they will tell you, they don't have confidence that this administration is going to get it right or move in the right direction. That is why I believe you have to come in and lay out a path. In my judgment, historically, most Presidents would not want the Congress telling them to do this. If I were President, I wouldn't want them telling me to do this. But at the same time, I would hope that I had consulted with Congress and not been as stubborn and not made the series of mistakes they have so that you wind up having alienated the very people you need to solve the problem. If you don't have some kind of regional security arrangement, the situation with Iran will grow more serious. Iran loves the fact that we are bogged down in Iraq. This just plays perfect for Iran. And Iran has a much stronger lever over us with respect to its current nuclear path because they know they could wreak havoc with what is happening on the ground in Iraq, and that restricts our choices and options. We will be stronger in counterproliferation efforts, we will be stronger in our efforts against terrorism in the region, and we will be able to create the credibility to bring these other countries to the table, which they are not willing to do today, if we make this kind of transition. If they understand that we are acknowledging that our presence is a problem, they have to step up because they don't want regional chaos. I believe that is exactly what helps us get it done. That is what changes the dynamics.

Mr. KERRY. Well, if that is all that gets in the way of this, Mr. President, I am confident we can find expediting language or other language that would resolve it. But I will tell you, Congress is going to be dealing with this issue next year at this time if we don't change this policy. Like it or not, we are going to be here debating it one way or the other.

Mr. KERRY. Most likely in Kuwait, Qatar, the Gulf States, if you work out a security arrangement.