(July 17, 2007)
Congressional Record
Saturday, July 21, 2007
6:03 PM
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise to address the issue before the Senate. I have stayed all night and listened to remarks from my colleagues on both sides. I have tremendous respect for each and every one of them.
I do have some issues, however, with some rhetorical questions that have been asked and not responded to and I think are some voices that have been referred to that have not been really answered that I would like to address in my few minutes.
First of all, the Levin-Reed amendment specifically calls for a withdrawal beginning 120 days from now and completed by the spring of next year. Unconditional, notwithstanding whatever action may be taking place on the ground, what progress may or may not have been made, a precipitous and a final withdrawal.
What I would like to talk about is something that no one has mentioned; that is, the consequences if that actually takes place. I would like to do it in the context of the rhetorical question that was asked by the Senator from New Jersey, who asked the question: How many more lives?
His reference, I know, was to the soldiers in the American and the allied forces in Iraq . But the question is meritorious as a response to the consequences of a Levin-Reed amendment passing.
I joined the Foreign Relations Committee this year, as the Presiding Officer has as well. I noted that he did what I did. He sat through almost all of the hearings we had in January and February on the question of the surge and the question of withdrawal and redeployment. We all heard the same thing. Expert after expert argued over whether the surge would or would not work, or the degree to which it would work.
But no one, no one--from former Secretary Madeline Albright or former Secretary Colin Powell to John Murtha, the representative in the Congress, to Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker, all of whom testified, and 20 others, everyone said the result of a withdrawal or redeployment at that period in January would mean countless untold loss of life in Iraq . And most of them said it would cause a great loss of life in the entire Middle East.
I have had visits from representatives of other Middle Eastern countries who have said: Please do not have a precipitous withdrawal because we will not be able to contain the sectarian violence that will certainly follow.
Now, does that mean we should remain as an occupying peacekeeper? No. But it means if we have objectives and benchmarks for victory, we should give ourselves the chance for that to take place.
In May of this year, we had the debate we are having again today. In May of this year, on the Iraqi supplemental--which was to fund the war in Iraq for our soldiers--we had this debate on whether we should withdraw. We decided not to do it. And that was the right decision. We further decided to put some benchmarks, that we should judge the merits of our progress in part by July 15, and then later on September 15. The President reported 3 days early on July 15 the progress that has been made.
Some has been made, some has not been made. But we all determined that it would be September, and the report of General Petraeus, the man we unanimously put in charge of the battle, as to whether we went forward, proceeded the way we were or changed our strategy.
I do not know what the results of the September 15 report are going to be, but I know I agree with the lady by the name of Lucy Harris. Lucy is the kind of person to whom we ought to all listen. Her son, Noah, 1LT Noah Harris, died in Iraq 2 years ago. He was an e-mail buddy with me during his tour, so I knew a little bit about why he was there and what he believed.
Noah Harris was a young man who, on September 11, 2001, was at the University of Georgia and a cheerleader. The day the incident, terrible incident took place in New York City, Noah Harris went straight to Army ROTC as a junior ROTC, applied for ROTC, studied to become a commissioned officer, solely because of the inspiration he had gotten from seeing that tragedy and knowing that he wanted to represent his country and do something to pursue terrorism.
He went in the Army in 2004, was on the ground in Iraq , became known as the Beanie Baby Soldier because in the one pocket he carried bullets, in the other he carried Beanie Babies. He befriended the Iraqi children.
Noah died tragically. I went to his funeral. I paid respect to his parents. I have listened to Lucy, and I have followed her comments in the 2 years that have passed since his tragic loss.
This week, on July 15, in the Columbus newspaper in Georgia and other newspapers in a syndicated article, Ms. Harris was interviewed regarding the current debate that we are having on the floor of the Senate. I would like to quote two quotes from that article. First quote from Lucy Harris:
"They should just defer to Petraeus,'' Lucy Harris said of GEN David Petraeus, the commander of forces in Iraq . "It's a political game.''
Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this entire article.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ISAKSON. Then, secondly, at the end of the article, I think a paragraph that all of us should hear: Lucy said the following:
We're talking about boots on the ground, real people. When I think about my son who could have done anything with his life, but he fought because he believed in his country and what we are doing in Iraq . ..... I just don't want it to have been in vain.
Well, I want to say to Lucy Harris and the parents of every soldier and the loved ones of every soldier who has been deployed, and especially those whose lives have been lost, we don't want them to be in vain, nor do we want them to be deployed in an endless occupation. We have a benchmark going to September 15, a general who had the unanimous support of this body, and operating under a funding mechanism that received an 80-vote margin in May.
Let's end the quibbling at this moment on what we do and give the plan a chance to have its final merits judged and weighed by the man who is on the ground.
As I said at the outset of my remarks, I can completely respect the statements everybody made and the opinions of everybody here. But this is a very serious question. And we should vote, and will vote, tomorrow at 11. When we do, I will not vote for cloture because I want to continue the commitment that was made by this body in the middle of May on the funding of the Iraq supplemental, the timetable for reports to come back, and the conditions upon which we would change, a new way forward, if and only if, those benchmarks were not met and progress was not being weighed.
I think we owe it to Lucy Harris. We owe it to the legacy of the sacrifice her son made and the sacrifice made by the countless men and women who are in Iraq and those who have served before them.
I yield the floor.
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