U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

Mr. President, last month Americans across this nation celebrated Memorial Day.  It was a day that had special significance for millions of World War Two veterans, tens of thousands of whom came to Washington to see the long awaited memorial on The Mall to honor them and the more than 10 million American veterans of that war who are no longer living.

This Memorial Day was also an opportunity to reflect for those of us too young to remember that war, but old enough to have parents or friends who fought, died, or in so many other ways sacrificed and labored together to defeat enemies that threatened the survival of the free world.

For me, it was a day of mixed emotions.  It was uplifting for Marcelle and me to be on the Mall and to see so many World War Two veterans and their families together, many of them reuniting with members of their divisions or regiments for the first time in over half a century.  It was extraordinarily moving to hear their stories of the war, told as if it were yesterday – stories of bone chilling fear, incredible suffering, and awe inspiring bravery.

It was also a somber occasion.  I think each of us was reminded of how much we, and so many millions of people in countries around the world, owe to that generation of Americans.

There was much talk of D-Day, and the thousands of Americans who died on the beaches that first day of the invasion of Normandy.  Having returned from Normandy for the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, I can say that the feeling is similar to what one experiences when visiting Gettysburg or any of the great battlefields of the Civil War.  It is difficult to fathom that so many men so young could face death with such undaunted courage.

It was my second visit to Normandy.  I was last there for the 50^th anniversary, and the sight of those rows, and rows, and rows of white crosses was every bit as moving this time as it was the last.

Three weeks ago I also attended the funeral of one of two young Vermonters who were killed in action in Iraq on May 25.  Sgt. Kevin Sheehan and Spec. Alan Bean died when their base on the outskirts of Baghdad was attacked.  Six other Vermonters were inured, three seriously.  Sgt. Sheehan and Spec. Bean were the ninth and tenth Vermonters to die in Iraq. 

Then on June 7, another Vermonter, Sgt. Jamie Gray, was killed and two members of his Battalion were injured when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device.  He was the eleventh Vermonter to die in Iraq.  At his funeral, I thought how the past few weeks have been very sad ones in my state; but, of course, the same could be said for many other states.

As of today, 844 Americans have died in Iraq since the start of the war, and there are thousands more who we rarely hear of who have been wounded.  They have lost legs, arms, their eyesight, or suffered other grievous injuries that will plague them for the rest of their lives.

And there are the tens of thousands of Iraqis, including many thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire, who have been killed or injured.  Their numbers are not even reported. 

When I am in Vermont, and I am there most weekends, there is one question that I am asked over and over.  “What are you doing to bring our troops home?”  It is a question that I found myself asking this Memorial Day weekend, and in Vermont during those funerals, and then again at Normandy.  It arises from a fundamental disagreement with President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, and his rationale for continuing to keep tens of thousands of our troops there in harm’s way indefinitely.

The attacks of 9/11 were unlike anything our nation had experienced since that infamous day at Pearl Harbor over a half century ago.  I supported the President’s decision to use military force against al Qaeda and the Taliban who had shielded them in Afghanistan.  It was the right response and the whole world was behind us.

But as so many people warned, the decision to launch a unilateral, preemptive war against Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no plan or ability to attack us, was a fateful diversion from the real terrorist threat. 

The President’s most recent justification for the war – previous justifications having been proven false – is that the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussein.  They are.  But that is not the measure of a policy that led us into a war based on a false premise, faulty, distorted intelligence, and an astounding lack of understanding or concern for the huge costs and liabilities.

Those of us who have to vote to spend the billions of dollars that are necessary to keep our forces there should ask whether the President’s decision to “stay the course,” apparently indefinitely, justifies the continued deaths of Americans – soldiers and civilians – at the dawn of their lives, often by the very people they were sent to liberate or to help recover.

No one questions that we were unforgivably vulnerable on 9/11.  Our borders were porous.  Several of the highjackers were living openly, and illegally, in this country.  Simply securing the doors on airplane cockpits might have prevented those attacks.  Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies were barely speaking to each other.  Communication between the White House, the Strategic Air Command, the FAA and the Pentagon was hopelessly confused. Countless warnings were ignored.

No one questions that we need to do far more to protect ourselves from terrorists. Every American is a potential target, as we saw, again, last week with the sickening execution style murder of Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.

The question is how best to protect ourselves at home, and how best to build the alliances we need to combat terrorism around the world. 

Imagine if instead of spending $150 billion, soon to be more than $200 billion, to invade and occupy Iraq, we had used that money differently.

Imagine if we had used it to increase 50 fold the number of police officers in this country.

Imagine if we had used it to put two air marshals on every airplane in or entering American airspace.

Imagine if we had used it to tighten our border controls, so rather than inspecting 10 percent of the shipping containers and trucks entering this country, we inspected 100 percent.

Imagine if we had used it to increase 50 fold the number of immigration officers at our ports of entry, and to increase 50 fold the number of investigators to track down people who are here illegally. 

Imagine if we had used it to increase 50 fold our surveillance capabilities along the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Imagine if we had used it to increase 10 fold the amount we spend to protect nuclear materials, reactors, and weapons sites from sabotage or theft by terrorists.

Imagine if we had used it to teach arabic to10,000 new intelligence officers, and stationed them around the world.

Think of the schools we could build, the hospitals we could build, the medical breakthroughs we could fund, and on and on.

Imagine how much safer we would be if we had done these things.  Instead, we are spending that money in Iraq, and we will spend another $50 billion in Iraq next year.  Yet even the Secretary of Defense testified that, after spending $150 billion, he does not know if we are winning the war against terrorism.  I think it is safe to say that if he believed we were, he would be the first to say so.

Mr. President, when President Bush announced his decision to invade Iraq he said all the things he was expected to say.  He said he made his decision only as a last resort, after exhausting every other option.  He said it was the hardest decision of his presidency.

In fact, other options were far from exhausted, and the intelligence he relied on was manipulated, misinterpreted, and wrong. 

In fact, we now know that it was a decision the President made after minimal debate and with little difficulty.  He consulted only his closest political advisors who for years, despite never experiencing combat themselves, had called for the use of force to overthrow Saddam Hussein.  Those outside the President’s inner circle who had reservations were ignored.  Those who understand the history and the culture and religious and ethnic rivalries of that part of the world, whom he might have listened to, were ignored.

Over two hundred thousand young Americans were sent to Iraq, and over 135,000 remain there.  They were sent into war despite the absence of any tangible threat to the United States.  They were sent to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Many were sent without body armor, without adequate water, and without the proper armor on their vehicles.  They were sent in insufficient numbers to prevent the chaos that has caused twice the casualties since the collapse of the Iraqi Government, when the President declared “Mission Accomplished.”  Many of our most severely wounded have come home to inadequate medical care, or foreclosures on their homes.

The Pentagon’s leaders always insist that the safety and welfare of our troops is their highest priority, but history is replete with examples to the contrary and today we are seeing history repeating itself.

Even worse, as hundreds of Americans die and thousands suffer terrible wounds, the rest of the country goes about its daily business, packing for their summer vacations, as if the war is someone else’s problem. 

Our soldiers do not have the luxury of refusing to fight if they disagree with the President.  That is why a decision by the nation’s leaders to send America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way, and to keep them where they are being killed and wounded every day, should be made only if the security of the United States depends on it.

Aside from the usual patriotic cliches, the President has not explained why the security of the United States depends on keeping tens of thousands of Americans deployed in Iraq’s cities where they are being blown up by roadside bombs and shot by snipers.  What are they doing there that is worth the loss of lives?

There are encouraging steps as a new Iraqi government takes shape.  But they do nothing – nothing – to obscure the grim reality that virtually every day more young American lives are lost.  How long will this continue?  The President says our troops will be there until they “finish the job.”  What job?  It is more than a year since the fall of Baghdad, yet we still do not know what the mission is.

Is it to make Iraq a democracy?  Is it, as our troops are told, to kill and capture “bad guys?”  Is it to protect the oil wells and refineries and Halliburton’s other investments there?  Is it to remake the Middle East? 

Even the President concedes that other countries are not going to donate significant numbers of their own troops.

The hard truth, which no one in this Administration is willing to admit, is that regardless of almost anything else that happens in Iraq in the coming year, hundreds – perhaps thousands – more of America’s sons and daughters are likely to be killed or wounded.

Mr. President, there are times when war is unavoidable, as it was when Germany invaded Europe, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and when al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington.  And when that happens, when the security of the country depends on it, the country unites and great sacrifices of life and limb are willingly made. 

It is those sacrifices that we honor on Memorial Day, and which those of us who were just in Normandy were reminded of so vividly.

But the war against terrorism is a different kind of war. 

It will not be won by invading and occupying countries. 

It will not be won by alienating our friends and allies, nor by inciting the anger of Muslims around the world who now believe the United States is at war with Islam itself. 

It will not be won by arresting people, calling them terrorists, torturing and humiliating them, and releasing them only after it becomes a public relations disaster.  Why, if they were innocent, were they detained so long in the first place? It makes a mockery of the very idea of justice. 

The war against terrorism will not be won by publicly claiming to respect the law when you are secretly declaring the law obsolete, breaking the law, and then refusing to disclose what was done.

It will not be won when half the American people do not believe the war in Iraq is making them safer. 

It will not be won with self-serving rhetoric that distorts history and bears little resemblance to reality.

The war against terrorism will be best fought by using our military selectively, as we are by tracking down al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

It will be best fought by building alliances, by working closely and cooperatively with the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of other countries to infiltrate terrorist networks, capture their leaders, and seize their assets. 

It will be best fought by doing far more to help create economic opportunities for the hundreds of  millions of impoverished people, particularly in Muslim countries, who have little more than their faith and their anger, and who are the terrorist recruiters’ greatest hope.

And it will be best fought by giving far higher priority to strengthening our defenses here at home.

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