Iraq Debate-Open Thread

As the House of Representatives prepares to vote on a resolution condemning the President's plan to add more troops to the never-ending Iraq war. I thought it would be good to check out some of what members of Congress said today...and noticeably different tone that we've seen before.

“How many more street-corner memorials are we going to have for this war? This is what the President’s proposal does – it sends more of our best and bravest to die refereeing a civil war.”

-Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pennsylvania)

“Our soldiers are trained to fulfill their mission without question. We as civilian leaders have a duty to question it on their behalf.”

-Rep.Tim Walz (D-Minnesota)

“There is a better way to show support for our troops than sending more of them to be killed, and there is a better way than continuing to give this President a blank check for war funding. Unless we move forward to place firm limitations on the appropriations, we will leave this war-making President constrained only by Dick Cheney’s imagination.”

-Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas)

“There is a growing consensus that only a political solution, not a military one, will address the sectarian conflict in Iraq. Yet President Bush has rejected the wisdom of military commanders, the Iraq Study Group, and the voters by choosing to send more troops into the crossfire of a sectarian civil war. If the President won't provide an exit strategy, Congress must take the lead in ending the war.”

Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine)

"The continuing use of our national treasure in what is an inconclusive, open-ended involvement within a country where the long term benefits do no match what we need to reap is why I am opposed to a troop surge that doubles down on a bad military bet that has been tried already."

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pennsylvania)

“[The opposition’s] disagreement is not with my caucus or even the forty of fifty Republicans who will side with us. It is with the 60% of the American people who think this war has gone on too long, and who no longer think that a blood feud between Sh’ia and Sunni is worth American blood. It is with the very patriotic people in my state who love democracy and who wish it for people all around the globe but who know that a culture must be shaped by the people who live in it.”

-Rep. Artur Davis (D-Alabama)

“I remain unconvinced that this large new deployment of troops to Baghdad will further that goal at this point, particularly because the plan does not differ substantially enough from previous efforts to secure the Iraqi capital. The President’s plan further narrows rather than expands our strategic options.”

-Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-South Dakota)

"We now find ourselves locked in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. The Iraq of today is vastly different from the Iraq we entered nearly four years ago, yet our strategy remains the same. We need to succeed in Iraq, but we need to redefine what success is."

Rep. Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma)

“My concern about another surge is that it will only delay the day that Iraqis make the political decisions necessary to quell the sectarian violence. They’ve got to divide up the oil fairly, let the banned Baathists back into positions of public trust and come up with a working model of pluralism. I want all Iraqi factions to know that they don’t have forever to make these decisions. We’re providing their protection; we have a right to tell them to hurry. We have an obligation to our service men and women to tell the Iraqi factions to hurry.”

Rep. Bob Inglis (R-South Carolina)

“Our country needs a policy to secure and stabilize Iraq, one that constructively engages in diplomacy and partners with neighboring countries and the region to create a stable and peaceful nation, not a blank check to send more men and women into harm’s way.”

-Rep. Hilda Solis (D-California)

“The administration’s stubborn arrogance and incompetence have magnified the chaos in Iraq. Our brave troops have done everything asked of them, but the administration’s failures in planning post-conflict reconstruction and their shocking incompetence in management have opened the Pandora’s Box in sectarian violence and civil war.”

-Rep. Paul Hodes (D-New Hampshire)

"We take care of our soldiers over there when we as a Congress make certain the mission they have been sent to perform has a reasonable chance of success. In a war where so many tragic mistakes have been, this Congress must not sit quietly by while additional plans are cooked up in Washington whose only certainty is to accelerate the loss of American lives, compound the already severe strain on military capability and accelerate the burn rack of taxpayer dollars spent in Iraq."

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-North Dakota)

"Despite our difference, I believe the President is sincere in his desire to being a successful end to the war in Iraq, but he has failed to convince me that sending these 21,000 troops represents a new and successful strategy. We went into Iraq under a failed plan in 2003 and we can't afford to take the same failed path"

-Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana)

"Most of what we have spent has been purely foreign aid in nature: rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, giving free medical care, training police, giving jobs to several hundred thousand Iraqis and on and on. Our Constitution does not give us the authority to run another country as we have in reality been doing in Iraq."

-Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tennessee)

"The administration contends that sending more combat troops in Iraq is somehow a silver bullet that is going to quell the violence....I couldn't disagree more"

-Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-New York)

"I find it funny that the pro-life-- the self-proclaimed pro-life party is the party that wants to keep extending the war; I find it ironic that all of the great budget hawks of the Republican Party want to throw 8 billion dollars a month to keep going and going and going as we borrow the money from China; But I also found the debate at times disappointing; where members of the other side have questioned our side; when they've said 'Whose side are we on?' and 'How can we say that we support the troops?' and that we're somehow unpatriotic. And I would just like to say that, you know, when the Republican Party and this President didn't send enough troops, we didn't call you unpatriotic; and when you sent our young soldiers over there without the body armor, we never called you unpatriotic."

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)

"This resolution is an opportunity to thank our brave men and women in uniform who have performed magnificently in Iraq, and to show the American people that Congress wants to help the President develop a policy for victory.”

-Rep. Walter Jones (R-North Carolina)

"What kind of nation are we, when a President takes us to war based on lies and deceptions, when our energy policy is decided behind closed doors and when in free elections, not every vote is counted."

-Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wisconsin)

"As we debate the future of Iraq this week, one thing is certain. You cannot edit or airbrush history. We know today that there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no enriched uranium from Niger. There was no connection to al-Qaeda. We were not welcomed as liberators. Freedom is not on the march, and more than four years later, the mission has not been accomplished."

-Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts)

"The catch-all phrase, “War on Terrorism”, in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. It’s deliberately vague and non definable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances."

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)

"It is time for Congress to stand on its hind legs and take away the keys of the man who has driven our foreign policy into a ditch"

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Washington)