John Murtha

Mr. MURTHA

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. ETHERIDGE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I want to go over a couple of things here that some of it was talked about yesterday and I said we need a plan. We also need a change of direction. Now, why do I say we need a change of direction? A number of people brought up Beirut. I remember being on the floor, and the Speaker of the House asked me to go to Beirut after the President had deployed 1,400 troops to Beirut. Go over to Beirut, see what is going on. I did. A friend of mine who had been in Vietnam with me was there, the commanding officer, and the rules we engaged in were very loose. Only had 1,400 people, did not even have people on the high ground to protect themselves. They were shooting down at the Marines down in the valley. I came back and I told the President, I told Weinberger, I told Tip O'Neill, you have got to get them out of there. They did not, 241 Marines were killed. The President saw it was a mistake; he changed direction. One thing about President Reagan, he understood when to change. He understood when you change direction. He had one of the biggest tax cuts in the history of Congress, and then he had one of the biggest tax increases. People forget he had a tax increase because he wanted to change direction. He changed directions in Central America. I supported him. They burned me in effigy back at home because I supported Reagan all through the Central American thing, but we came to compromise in the end, and he saw we had to change direction and he did. What I am saying today, Somalia, I told President Bush I, do not go into Somalia because if you go into Somalia you will not be able to get out. He said to me, I will have them out by inauguration day. He had lost the election by that time. He went in after the election was over, and he said, I will have them out by inauguration day. Well, he did not get them all out by inauguration day, and we changed direction there. We changed direction in the wrong direction. We went after Adide, who was a tribal leader. We sent in special forces. They bungled the thing. They fired the Secretary of Defense. They had accountability, and President Clinton changed direction. We redeployed. So these are not times to criticize Presidents. This is something that needed to be done. Now, we are in the same position here. Iraqi civilian deaths, 2003, 250; Iraqi civilian deaths in 2006, 1,500 a month. Went from we are there, we are not someplace else, we are there, and that is how many deaths. Iraqi kidnappings per day, 2003, two; today, there is 35 a day, 35 a day. U.S. troop fatalities, there were 37 in May of 2003; in May of 2006, 68. We are there. We are there as occupiers in Iraq. Iraqi Army police fatalities were 10 in 2003; 149 in May of this year. Now, this is not progress. We are on the ground with 138,000 troops. The number of estimated insurgents, and I do not know how they find out who they are, but he said there is 3,000, Mr. Speaker, in May of 2003. There is now 20,000 insurgents. Now why did that come about? Because they look at us as occupiers. Only the Iraqis can solve this problem. The United States cannot solve the problem as a foreign occupier, and our troops are caught in between a civil war. Daily attacks by insurgents, 2003, there were five per day; today, there is 90. Monthly incidents of sectarian violence, you want to know what sectarian violence is? Sectarian violence is civil war. May 2003, 5; May of 2006, 250. We are there. We are there in the country, and it has increased from 5 to 250. So do not tell me stay the course is the answer. We need a change in direction. We need to assess this situation and change. All of us want the same solution. We want a stable Middle East. It is important not only to the United States; it is important to the international community. Bush I worked with the international community, and he got a coalition together, and it was successful, and he knew the limitations of what he could do. He did not go into Iraq, even though there were some zealots who wanted to go into Iraq. He knew, and he said in his book, If I go into Iraq, I will have to occupy it, I will have to reconstruct it, and I will lose the coalition. So he did not go into Iraq, and he was absolutely right. I supported him at the time, even though a lot of people had said they did not support what he was doing. Somebody yesterday said, oh, you cannot measure the amount of water they have per day, that does not mean anything, the amount of electricity. Let me tell you something. I was without electricity for 8 hours last winter. It is not pleasant. I was cold. Now, it does not get that cold in Iraq, but I was without it for 8 hours and the house got cold. I thought to myself, in Iraq, they only have sometimes 8 to 10 hours of electricity a day. Water, they have 1 hour of water. There is less oil production than before. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz said we are going to pay for this with the oil production. Well, it has fallen far short of that. I think the OMB chairman, I think he at the time predicted this war would cost maybe $50 billion, and Wolfowitz said it would cost nothing because they would pay for it. Well, right now we have spent $450 billion. The longer we stay, the more we pay, in lives, in hurt to the families, the more we pay in financial resources. It took us 15 years to get over the Vietnam War. We had 18 percent interest rates. We had 13 percent unemployment. Through the Reagan administration the Federal Reserve had to increase rates to 21 percent. I remember because at the time I was trying to buy a house. I remember trying to buy it at first, and I said 7 percent, I am not going to pay 7 percent. It went up to 21 percent. So we suffered because it was guns and butter. Here it is the tax cuts and troops in the field paying for the war. So stay and pay is not a solution. I say redeploy and be ready. Get our troops out of harm's way and put them on the periphery and let the Iraqis settle this themselves. Only the Iraqis can settle this, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Vietnam is the same thing. I believed in my mission in Vietnam. All of us believed in it, but in 1967 when I came back from Vietnam, they had an election. President Lyndon Johnson said everything's all right. Matter of fact, I have a bullet that they gave me, that the first Marines gave to us when we left there that said everything's all right. We all believed in our mission. That did not mean we were going to win the war. That is the problem. At times we have to change direction. When we look at the Vietnam War, there was an election right after I came back in 1967, and President Lyndon Johnson said, now it is all over, they will be able to do this themselves. 37,000 Americans killed after that, and you know the results. It was not because of the public. It was because the enemy kept forcing us into the type of war they were fighting. It was the kind of war we cannot fight. We could have gone all out and obviously destroyed Hanoi, but we had to worry about the Russians and the Chinese. This is a real problem. It is guerrilla-type war, and when we fight, we have to use overwhelming force. When we use overwhelming force, you make enemies, and when you make enemies, you lose the hearts and minds. I am saying the same thing you are. We want to win some kind of, I do not say victory. We want to win stability in the Middle East. That is the key because it is important to the free world. That is what is so important. So we all are saying the same thing. One of the top generals said to me, that part cannot be won militarily all the time they will say. General Pace said it cannot be won militarily. So how do we do it? Diplomatically, politically and when the Iraqis say we are going to give amnesty to people that kill Americans, I mean, they fired the guy, okay, but that is a signal to them. We have 47 percent of the Iraqis say that they want to kill Americans. They think that is patriotic for them to kill Americans. That is disturbing to me. The reason I started speaking out, one of the reasons, I remember I was in the hospital. One young woman said to me, with her husband lying there on the bed, wounded after a second trip, she said, you know, he did not enlist, this woman said, to fight for the Iraqis. He enlisted to fight for America. It has got to be in the national security interest of America. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request. (Mr. KILDEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver) for the purpose of a unanimous consent request. (Mr. OLVER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to make a couple of the comments, and then I will reserve my time. The gentleman just before I spoke talked about how long it took America to get its independence. Actually, it is more than just 6 or 7 years, it went on through the Civil War, but they were all Americans. It was not an occupying force that was trying to force democracy on the United States. Can you imagine what we would have done if we had an occupying force here trying to force democracy on the United States? It would not have worked. But of course they were not democracies in most cases anyway. So I just want to point out that in Iraq we have become the occupiers, and 47 percent of the people in Iraq, and this is a poll only 3 months old, says it is okay to kill Americans. One of the officials in the Iraqi government offered amnesty. Since I spoke out on November 17, things have gotten worse. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. Every day it gets worse. From May to May, it gets worse and worse. It is not a matter of stay the course. It is a matter of change direction. I said a little earlier, Ronald Reagan understood when it was time to change direction. He did one of the biggest tax cuts in history. He turned around a little bit later and adjusted that. This didn't call it a tax increase, it was an adjustment. In Beirut he decided we have to make a change, it won't work. In Somalia, President Clinton did the same thing. And over that mistake, and it was a substantial mistake, the Secretary of Defense resigned because he had lost the confidence of the military in the way he handled the situation in Somalia. We changed direction there. We went in the wrong direction. We went after a tribal leader named Aideed. In Iraq, unfortunately, the way we operate as a military, and there is no one who understands better than the gentleman with the 173rd in California, understands what the military does when it goes into a place. You have to use overwhelming force. I promote that. I am in favor of that. I do everything I can to make sure that the military has what they need to prevail and protect American lives. But when you do that, you inadvertently kill people and you make enemies. Abu Ghraib was another example of the enemies that we made, and the public relations battle has been lost worldwide. People have discredited the United States and have little confidence in our ability. Somebody brought up Spain yesterday. They said ask Spain about terrorism. Well, 56 percent of the people in Spain think the United States is more of a threat in Iraq than Iran is in the world. So we have got a lot of things we can talk about as rhetoric. The facts are the situation is not getting better. We have 130,000 troops on the ground and only Iraqis can handle this. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to me, we stand here and fight in the air-conditioned Chambers of the United States Congress where these fellows are walking around in Iraq, men and women, with 70 pounds every day facing IEDs, never knowing when they may go off with tremendous stress. They are being deployed three and four times. It is easy to stay in an air-conditioned office and say I'm going to stay the course. But let me tell you something, those troops, I hope they believe in what they are doing. That's what America is all about. But standing here and talking about policy and criticizing people just because they disagree with a policy is absolutely absurd. All of us support the troops and want them to come home as soon as they can. What we need is a change in direction so we will be able to work this out. All of us want stability in the Middle East. That is what this whole thing is all about. We just disagree on how you do it. We disagree. Ever since the troops have been there, everything has gotten worse. Electricity production is below pre-war levels; water only 1 hour a day in some parts. In Anbar Province no water. 90 percent unemployment. Not one project in Anbar Province. So it is not a matter of whether it is good or not. It is a matter only that the Iraqi's should solve this thing. And when I hear somebody standing here sanctimoniously saying we are going to fight this out, we are not fighting at all. It is the troops that are doing the fighting, the families that are doing the sacrificing, a very small proportion of families in this country are doing the sacrificing. And that is why I get so upset when they stand here sanctimoniously saying we are fighting this thing. It is the troops that are doing the fighting, not the Members of Congress that are doing the fighting. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may use. I didn't mean to imply that the gentleman from California is sanctimonious. It is just some of the speakers have been sanctimonious. But that is not the point. We want the same thing. We want stability in the Middle East. It is important. We use more oil than any other country in the world, 20.6 million barrels of oil a day. The closest to us is China with 6 million barrels of oil a day. The whole free world wants stability in the Middle East. It is how we get it. What I am saying is there is more instability in Iraq because of us, because of our troops. They have become occupiers. This is the thing that worries me. That is why I think we have to change direction. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would just point out to the Speaker that Franklin Roosevelt might have said that, but he waited till they attacked us at Pearl Harbor before he took any action. He tried to build up the forces, but certainly didn't take any military action until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. The problem is, 42 percent of the people don't know what the mission is. When I talk to the young folks in the hospitals, they tell me their mission is to go out and find IEDs. That is explosive devices. Their mission is to be a target. Hey, we all agree with everything that the gentleman from California said, Mr. Speaker. We agree. We support the troops. We have done everything we can do. It is the policy we disagree with. It is a change in direction we want. We are staying and we are paying and we are paying with troops' lives. We are paying with financial resources. The first gulf war the United States paid $5 billion. We had 500,000 American troops. We had 160,000 coalition troops. President Bush I did a marvelous job, one of the finest international coalitions in the history of the United States. They paid and they produced and they supported. But he knew how far he could go. He understood the enemy and he understood what could be done. And he was willing to change direction. When they thought they had enough troops, General Schwartzkopf said he needed more troops, he put more troops on the ground. So I am convinced all of us agree we want a solution. But the American troops, unfortunately, have become occupiers. And 80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there. And I have a piece of paper here that the Vice President of Iraq, here, Tuesday night on the way home on Air Force One, President Bush said there are concerns about commitment in keeping our troops there. They are worried about it to a person. They said they will leave before capable. Then the Associated Press reports, yesterday morning Iraqi's Vice President has asked President Bush for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. And Iraq's Vice President's office said Vice President of Iraq made the request during his meeting with Bush on Tuesday when the U.S. President made a surprise visit. I supported him, the President said. Eighty percent of the Iraqi people want us out. They want to solve these problems themselves. The Americans cannot force democracy on Iraq. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. Daniel E. LUNGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller). (Mr. MILLER of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MURTHA

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 60 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) from the Out of Iraq Caucus, and I ask unanimous consent she control the time.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. MURTHA. Were you in Iraq?

Mr. MURTHA. Boots on the ground?

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

Mr. MURTHA. I will be the last speaker.

Mr. MURTHA. I yield myself 1 minute. One of the Members said, ask Spain about the threat. Fifty-six percent of the population of Spain believes the U.S. in Iraq is the most dangerous threat to world peace. They rank Iran lesser of a threat than the United States. And one other thing. When we look back at the intelligence cuts, President Bush I felt it was a peace dividend and started to cut the intelligence budget years ago. So we have to make sure we don't let our rhetoric get ahead of the facts. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the time allocated by House Resolution 868 to the ranking minority members of four committees instead be controlled by the minority leader or her designees.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 minutes. All of us know, all of us understand stability in Iraq is important, not only to the United States but to the world. It is no secret that Iraq is of particular importance because of its oil. The United States consumes 20.6 billion barrels of oil per day. Yet we produce only 5.1 billion barrels of oil a day. China is the second largest consumer, with 6.9 million barrels per day, and they produce 3.6 million barrels per day. Iraq has the fourth largest oil reserve in the world. Saudi Arabia is number one, Canada number two and Iran number three. So all of us agree Iraq is important. But how do we get to a conclusion? Let me compare Gulf War I with Gulf War II. In Gulf War I, Kuwait was attacked by Saddam Hussein. It was a brutal attack. President Bush I immediately reacted. He sent his emissary, Secretary Cheney, to Saudi Arabia. They got an agreement from Saudi Arabia to use their land to put troops in. He immediately sent in the Airborne Division, and he immediately sent in F-16 fighters to deter Saddam Hussein. All of us knew that there was a possibility at that time that he would have complete control of the oil in the Middle East. So we knew how important it was. Then President Bush started calling up the Reserves. He called a number of Members of Congress over to the White House, and he consulted and talked to them. I do not remember if the gentleman from Illinois was there, but there were seven or eight of us went to the White House. We talked to him about calling up the Reserves and having other people pay. This is important not only to the United States. This is important internationally. This oil supply, this stability in the Middle East is important to the whole world, and he went to work. He called every major nation. He called Egypt, and this was no easy task for these countries to come around to decide to support the United States. Matter of fact, President Mubarak said to me that King Hussein came to him and said if you support the United States, you will cut the throat of Saddam Hussein, and yet Egypt decided that they were going to go along with us. Then he talked about that we needed to have a U.N. resolution, which we did have. Then we had to have a resolution in the Congress of the United States. But the big thing that he promoted was he got a coalition together, and this coalition ended up with 400,000 American troops and 160,000 coalition troops. And I remember during this debate, I remember calling Secretary Cheney, calling General Scowcroft saying, you have got 250,000 troops over there, you don't need any more. Let's get this war going. And General Scowcroft said something I have never forgotten. He said, we are going to give General Schwarzkopf whatever he wants. He wants more troops, we are going to give him more troops. And Secretary Cheney called me and said we are going to have to send another 180,000 troops. We are going to have overwhelming force when we go into Kuwait. And they did have overwhelming force. It went on for 6 months. The troops were out in the field, they trained, and when they went in they did a magnificent thing. It was overwhelming. And it was paid for by other countries. Sixty billion dollars came from other countries. President Bush I convinced other countries that they had to help pay for this because it was not only important to the United States, it was important to them, the stability in the Middle East. Now, let me talk about the second Gulf War. The second Gulf War we had intelligence that said there were weapons of mass destruction; there was an al Qaeda connection. I believed that. As a matter of fact, I listened to the reports, and I was hesitant about the al Qaeda connection, but I believed that they had biological weapons. Matter of fact, a week or so before the war started, Ms. Pelosi, as the new minority leader, wanted to go overseas on her first trip. She wanted to visit the troops. Even though she had been against the resolution to go to war, she wanted to tell the troops she supported the troops. And anybody that votes for the Defense Subcommittee appropriations, anybody that belongs to the Armed Services Committee shows their support of the troops. So we went over, and on our way over we stopped in Turkey. Imagine, the 4th Division was sitting outside Turkey. It was supposed to outflank the Iraqis. And the State Department asked me, okay, talk to the Turkish government about letting us go through. Now, we had the most modern division, the most technologically advanced division in the whole world sitting there off Turkey. I talked to them and I became convinced they weren't going to let us go through, even though they had voted the very day I was there, and they voted by a majority, but not the supermajority they needed to allow the United States to go through. I went then to Kuwait and we listened to the commanders. The commanders told us that there is a red line drawn around Baghdad and if we cross the red line they are going to use biological weapons. And I believed that. I believed. As a matter of fact, they said if you cross this red line, we have already verified this by monitoring their telephones, by monitoring their cell phones. When we monitored cell phones of Saddam Hussein's headquarters they said use biological weapons. The troops believed it. They were prepared. They felt like they could go in there with protective gear, they could go in there with what they needed and the hot air, the winds, would dissipate the weapons. And, of course, they crossed the red line and nothing happened. But I still thought there were weapons of mass destruction. I still thought there were biological weapons. I came back and we sent a team over there. And the team went over and the team looked for those weapons of mass destruction. Matter of fact, at first a fella named Kay, that was so strong about it, former CIA, said, we will find them. And he looked for months and couldn't find anything at all. Absolutely no evidence of any kind of weapons of mass destruction. No biological weapon, no capability, no nuclear capability, no al Qaeda connection. When we go to war, we should go to war, first of all, if it is a threat to our national security. It was a threat to our national security when you talk about the first war, because it destabilized and he would have controlled all the oil in the Middle East, which is so important to the free world. The second time was no threat to our national security. Now, we didn't find that out, those of us who voted for it, didn't find this out until after we had gone to war. The second thing is you go with overwhelming force. I talked to one of the commanders who was in a meeting with five officials; there was him, there was Secretary Rumsfeld, there was Secretary Wolfowitz, General Pace, and General Myers. And he said we recommended 350,000 troops. And as you know, they gave him a lot less troops than that. The coalition troops at the most were up to 30,000 and now they are down to 20,000. The first war, 160,000. And the first war was all paid for. It cost us $5 billion. The reason I remember this so vividly is I was chairman of the committee at the time the money came through our committee, and we then sent it over, reprogrammed it over to the Defense Department itself. But the discrepancy that we have seen, the mischaracterization, the optimistic predictions are the problems that I have had. Now, I sent a letter, with Duncan Hunter and a number of other people, and I said to the President, we need 100,000 more troops. Well, the President decided he didn't need 100,000 more troops. Now, imagine this, we are on the ground and we have won the war. The troops did a magnificent job, as we knew they would, but they completely miscalculated the problems that we were going to have afterwards. Now, I talked to a tribal leader the other day in Anbar Province. He told me that, as far as he saw, the first 6 months we had occupied Anbar. Now, Anbar is the province we are having the most trouble right now. It is where Ramadi and Fallujah are. Those are the areas where there is the most contention. In the first 6 months there wasn't a shot fired. Not a shot fired. I said, let me ask you right now, what kind of progress have we made economically? No water, no electricity, no jobs in Anbar Province. Two million people. And we talk about Saddam Hussein. Almost 900,000 people left when Saddam Hussein was there. They left the country as refugees. The time we have been there 900,000 people have left the country. They voted with their feet. The President went in the other day, he says he was glad to see democracy in action. You know where he went? The same place I go, in the fortress. In the Green Zone. That is where he went. They are afraid to go outside the Green Zone. When I first went there, the first two or three trips I went, I could go anyplace. I drove around all over Iraq. The last time I landed at Baghdad Airport, they flew me to Anbar Province down in Haditha, and we flew so low because of the threat we had to come up over the wires in order to get down, and I didn't see a person the whole time. There were 2 million people in Anbar Province. Not one project. Not one. I said on the floor of the House the most important thing in that first supplemental, in the $87 billion, was the $18 billion that went for reconstruction. And of course there are so many projects that haven't been finished. Now, after we sent the letter about the 100,000, and during that period of time, we asked a fella named Hamre, who was the former Under Secretary of Defense, who went over to Iraq and he did a study for the Defense Department. He came back and said, you have got 3 to 6 months to get this straightened out. And what did he suggest had to be done? They weren't big projects. He suggested we had to have trash picked up, sewage taken care of, electricity, and jobs. Those are the kinds of things he talked about, and securing the border. Those are the things he said had to be done in 3 to 6 months, and if it is not done, it will go the other way. And all of us know what has happened. All of us know what has happened with the insurgency. Now, let me go through why I get so distressed by the reports that I get about how well it is going. First of all, the number of daily attacks in Iraq have gone from in 2004, daily, 53 attacks in 2004, 70 attacks in 2005, and in 2006, 90 attacks a day. Estimated size of the insurgency. Now, we are supposed to be making progress. That is what we hear. The estimated size of the insurgency in 2004 was 15,000. In May of 2005 it was 16,000. In May of 2006 it was 20,000. This is the way I measure whether there is progress or not progress. The amount of cash paid to families, this is an important point, to Iraqi civilians killed or maimed by the operation involving American troops went from in 2004, $5 million to $20 million. Now, what does that mean? The problem is that all of us want to solve the problem, all of us want to have a satisfactory answer in Iraq. The problem is the way we have to operate as a military. The reason we won the first Gulf War is we were fighting a conventional force and we wiped them out. Nobody can match our military. They are the best in the world. But now we are fighting a guerilla war, and that is the type of problem that we have. For instance, we went into Fallujah, we put 300,000 people outside their homes and only 100,000 have come back now. And when we put 300,000 people outside their home, every one of those are an enemy. Abu Ghraib. Why did Abu Ghraib happen? Abu Ghraib happened because we had insufficient forces and untrained people and unsupervised people in that prison. Now, what do I mean by untrained? We had one fella, who happened to be from my district, that had a court order against him because he had abused his family, and he couldn't carry a gun in Pennsylvania. And he said, I can't do this. This is against my nature. I don't know anything about taking care of prisoners. He is now in jail. But the point is he was untrained in that particular job, and even though he told them, they put him in the job. And of course we know the tremendous consequence, at the very time we went into Fallujah, at the very time we put 300,000 people outside their home. And listen, I endorse this. I know we have to have, when we go into an area, we have to use overwhelming force. That is the way the military has to operate. But, you see, these payments from $5 million in 2004 to $20 million last year, that is because when we go into a place we kill them inadvertently. And when we kill people inadvertently we make enemies, and Abu Ghraib was the biggest public relations disaster we had since My Lai during the Vietnam War. The number of complete or reconstructed projects, as I said, in al Anbar Province, imagine now, this is one-third of the geography of Iraq, and they have 2 million people, zero. Zero. Number of civilians who died in Baghdad last month, 1,400, in sectarian violence. What is the definition of sectarian violence? A civil war. All of us want to end this thing. All of us want to find a way to prevail in Iraq. This is a civil war and we are caught in a civil war. There is less than a thousand al Qaeda in Iraq. They have diminished al Qaeda. But we are caught in this civil war between 100,000 Shiias and 20,000 Sunnis fighting with each other. The average monthly U.S. war expenditure in Iraq: $4.4 billion in 2003, $5 billion in 2004, $6.1 billion in 2005, and $8 billion. The average monthly expenditure, $8 billion. Now, think what I am saying. The first Gulf War, and Duncan Hunter remembers this, they paid internationally. We paid $5 billion. He was on the Armed Services Committee. He knows what I am talking about. We paid $5 billion and they paid $60 billion. They had 160,000 troops in the first Gulf War. Now, let me talk about the sentiment and talk about the polls taken. We all look at the polls to see what is going on. Now, the only poll taken of U.S. forces in Iraq, about 3\1/2\ months ago: 72 percent of the American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within a year. Now, I can understand that. Let me tell you, it is hot, they are wearing 70 pounds every day when they are out there in the field, and I can certainly understand that. Forty-two percent say they do not know what the mission is. And that is devastating when they do not understand the mission. A public opinion Iraqi poll, a segment of 18 provinces, all 18 provinces: More than half the Iraqis say they are headed in the wrong direction, and 82 percent say the economic situation is either poor or fair. Now, these are the Iraqis. Ninety percent say the security situation is poor or fair. And who do they trust? Who do they trust for personal security? Forty-three percent trust the Iraqi police, 35 percent trust the Iraqi army, 6 percent trust the insurgents, 6 percent trust the insurgents, 4 percent trust the armed militia, and 1 percent, 1 percent trust the multinational force. In another poll taken at the beginning of this year, 47 percent approve the attacks on the United States forces, and 87 percent of the Iraqis endorse a timetable for withdrawal. Our global image couldn't have been higher after the first Gulf War, with 80 to 90 percent of the people in the world thinking the United States did a marvelous job. We had recovered from Vietnam, finally, in the first Gulf War. Ten of 14 countries polled said the war in Iraq has made the world more dangerous, and most of the countries rated the U.S. troops in Iraq a bigger danger to world peace than the threat posed by Iran. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, and Turkey all have more favorable ratings of China than the U.S. Now, this resolution is a restatement of the failed policy of this administration, and it is no surprise that that is what this is. We can't win this. This cannot be won rhetorically. We cannot sit here, stand here in an air-conditioned office and say we support the troops, say we support the policy. I visit the hospitals every week, and the only person to visit them more than I do is Bill Young and his wife. I see these young people. I am so impressed by their determination, and I am so hopeful we can end this terrible tragedy. When I got into this 6 months ago, I got into it because of the troops and because of the fact that I felt we couldn't do anything more militarily. We had done everything we could do militarily, and, second, because of the future of the military. The bill we are going to pass next week, and very few people are going to vote against it, if you want to really support the troops, that is what you vote for. You vote for that legislation. That will say we will run out of money for personnel for the troops because we cut $4 billion out of the base bill by September. We will take care of that. We will find a way to do it. But the point is the base bill was cut by $4 billion. Now let me tell you the difference in what I believe is the answer. I believe we redeploy and be ready; that is what I say. I say redeploy and be ready. We are the targets. We are causing the problem. You know who wants us to stay in Iraq right now, the al Qaeda wants us there because it recruits people for them. China wants us there. North Korea wants us there. Russia wants us there. We are depleting our resources, just like Russia depleted their resources in Afghanistan. The same thing is happening with the United States. We will have spent $450 billion by the end of this fiscal year. Now think, the first gulf war we spent $5 billion. We have spent $450 billion. Stay and we will pay, not only pay in dollars, in money; we are going to pay long term. I figure it took us through the Reagan administration to pay for the Vietnam War. We had 18 to 21 percent interest rates during the Reagan administration, and the reason we did was because Lyndon Johnson, the President of the United States, said we can have butter and we can have guns, and he didn't raise the taxes he should have raised when we had the war going on. So we continue to pay with lives lost in terms of financial treasure and more than $8 billion a month. We pay in terms of international reputation. We pay in terms of the future of our military. We stay and pay. I say redeploy and be ready. Let me tell this one last story. When I came out of Vietnam, they gave me this small bullet. It is a 45 caliber without any powder in it. It says: ``First Marines, everything is going to be all right.'' A month after I came out of Vietnam in 1967, Lyndon Johnson said, and I believed in the Vietnam War. I thought we were fighting communism. But Lyndon Johnson said, and they had an election, one month after I came out of Vietnam, everything was going to be all right. Do you know how many people we lost from 1967 until we pulled out? 37,000. Rhetoric does not answer the problem. Only the Iraqis can solve the problem in Iraq. They are fighting with each other, and our troops are caught in between. I say it is time to redeploy and be ready.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Let me comment on a couple of things the distinguished gentleman from Illinois said. He talks about early exit. This war has gone on, Mr. Chairman, this war has gone on longer than the Korean War. It has gone on longer than World War I, and it has gone almost as long as the European War. If I believed we were making progress, we can't win this militarily. What I am saying is to redeploy, to get our troops out of harm's way is the key. I see no progress at all in this operation. I see the opposite. When I see, you talk about al Qaeda being encouraged by what we say. Al Qaeda has gone from 15,000 to 20,000. Incidents have gone from 50 a day to 90 a day. That is the thing that worries me. And we are not making progress. We are losing progress. I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton). Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I believe we send them a message when we vote on the armed services bill. Very few people voted against it. I believe we voted, in the defense subcommittee of appropriations, only 15 or 16 people voted against it. But Theodore Roosevelt said, ``If you disagree with a policy and you do not say anything, you are actually treasonous.'' I disagree with the policy. I do not disagree with supporting the troops. There is no one that supports the troops better than the Members of this Congress. And that is shown by the few people that vote against the bill. One other thing: I think the gentleman made a mistake when he said we are for the war, against the war on terror. We are actually fighting for the war on terror is what we are doing. But I appreciate what the gentleman is saying. I appreciate the fact that he and I both asked for more troops at one point. He was the lead sponsor at that particular time. I recognize the gentleman from California for 13 minutes.

Mr. MURTHA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. This all sounds good. It is all rhetoric. It is rhetoric. The number of daily attacks in Iraq have gone from 2004, 53 attacks per day; May 2005, 70 attacks per day; May 2006, 90 attacks per day. Electricity is less than prewar level. No water available to all, only 1 hour a day, Mr. Speaker, and the oil production which was supposed to pay for the war is less than prewar production. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)