The Speaker pro tempore: Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Kucinich: Mr. Speaker, in a few short days the Congress of the United States will have an opportunity to end the war in Iraq if it so pleases, or we will vote to approve the supplemental and give the President of the United States the money that he is asking for to continue the war possibly through the end of his term.
In the next 5 minutes, I would like to discuss the implications of Congress's action and a plan that would enable us to take a new direction in Iraq, to bring our troops home, to stabilize Iraq, to close our bases, to end the occupation, and to end the war.
Last week, I submitted to this Congress such a plan embodied in H.R. 1234. H.R. 1234 is a plan to end the war, and it contains a number of elements which were arrived at with the help of people who have long experience at the U.N. in peacekeeping missions and security missions, experts in international relations, and military experts.
Two days ago, the administration said that it has no plan B for Iraq. As a matter of fact, a senior general said, "Plan B is plan A," which means that the administration is committed to a course of action which would keep our troops in Iraq through the end of its term. That is simply not acceptable.
In November, the American people voted for a new direction. In November, the American people changed the leadership of the Congress, voted to turn both the House and the Senate from Republican control to Democratic control, and I submit the issue was the war.
All across this country there is a great concern about the rising number of casualties; about that even when our troops serve and they come home after being injured, they are not being cared for; about the costs of the war, how we are seeing our budgets for housing and health care, for education, for seniors services, and, indeed, for veterans affairs reduced.
America is losing not only the lives of our soldiers, not only are we going into a great financial debt borrowing money from Beijing to fight a war in Baghdad, but we are losing our moral position in the world, continuing to prosecute a war that is simply based on lies. Let's face it, every assertion made that took us into Iraq has been ripped away as being a lie.
So what are we to do? H.R. 1234 does the following: It is predicated on Congress taking action to end the war, stop the funding. At that point, the administration will go to the world community and say, "Look, the money is no longer here for the war. We are going to close our bases, we are going to end the occupation, we are going to bring our troops home." Only by asserting that we will end the occupation will we be in a position to be able to get help from the world community, which really doesn't want anything to do with this war absent the United States taking a new direction.
The insurgency is fueled by the occupation. It is well understood. So we end the occupation. But then that is not enough. We need the international community to help us build a peacekeeping and security force that would move in as our troops move out.
The elements of the plan embodied in H.R. 1234 are the following: Not only do we end the occupation and bring our troops home and get the international community involved, but we also create the context for a program of reconciliation between the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. Right now there is no movement towards reconciliation, because with the U.S. occupying, the Shiites don't have any incentive at all to do that. We need to move out so that we can set in place a program of reconciliation and a program of honest reconstruction. No more theft from the American taxpayers or the Iraqi people by these contractors whose performance has been absolutely abominable, who have stolen billions of dollars. Give the Iraqi people a chance to have their own reconstruction program, with the jobs going to the people of Iraq so they can feed their families. In an economy with 50 percent of the people unemployed, we need to take a new approach and end the reconstruction program as it exists and start a new one.
In future presentations to this Congress, I intend to lay out the rest of H.R. 1234, which is the plan to end the war, bring our troops home, stabilize Iraq, and take a new chapter in America's relationship with the world.
