DLR'sCock
09-20-2004, 02:54 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/politics/campaign/18campaign.html?
Kerry Sees Plan to Call Up New Reserves After Nov. 2
By Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger
The New York Times
Saturday 18 September 2004
ALBUQUERQUE - Senator John Kerry on Friday accused the Bush administration of secretly planning a mobilization of Army Reserve and National Guard units immediately after the election.
At the same time, Mr. Kerry harshly attacked Vice President Dick Cheney for his financial ties to Halliburton, which has billions of dollars of government contracts in Iraq.
Mr. Kerry made his attacks as President Bush said for the first time that he planned to pull American troops out of Iraq as soon as Iraqi forces were trained to defend themselves and the country was "on the path to stability."
Officials of the Kerry campaign cited Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, as their source for information on the call-up plan.
"Hide it from the people, then make the move," Mr. Kerry told a town hall forum here.
In a statement and a telephone interview, Mr. Murtha, the top Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said that he had learned of the plan through conversations with Pentagon officials and that there was a "handshake deal" between officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration to delay the call-ups until after Nov. 2.
A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, denied any such secret plans, adding that the coming deployment of thousands of Reserve and National Guard troops was part of a normal rotation of forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, and that units were given enough notice.
In Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Bush did not address Mr. Kerry's accusations but went further than usual in discussing the preconditions for a withdrawal from Iraq.
"Once we get these folks trained and get them on the path to stability and democracy,'' Mr. Bush said, "our troops are coming home, with the honor they earned."
In the past, Mr. Bush has said only that the troops would not stay "a day longer" than necessary and he has criticized Mr. Kerry for saying he hoped to have troops out of Iraq within four years. Mr. Bush's choice of the word "stability" rather than democracy appeared to suggest that as long as the insurgency was quiet, troops could begin to withdraw even before democracy took hold.
Mr. Kerry, in his attack on Mr. Cheney, said the vice president still had a financial stake in Halliburton, the giant oil services and engineering company where he was chief executive from 1995 to 2000. The company has since charged Washington billions of dollars to feed American troops and rebuild Iraq.
"While Dick Cheney claims that he has gotten rid of all of his financial interests in Halliburton, he's actually received $2 million in bonuses and deferred compensation from his former company since taking office in 2001," Mr. Kerry said at the forum, which reflected the newly aggressive tone of his campaign.
The senator said Halliburton was profiting from "the mess in Iraq" at the expense of American troops and taxpayers and was engaging in extensive overcharging and waste under no-bid contracts.
"We need a president and vice president who aren't going to sacrifice the taxpayers' money on the alter of no-bid cronyism while our fighting men and women go without the armor and the equipment they need," Mr. Kerry said. "As commander in chief, I've got two words for companies like Halliburton that abuse the American taxpayer and the trust - you're fired!"
Mr. Kerry cited a report last year by the Congressional Research Service, an independent arm of Congress, that said federal ethics laws considered deferred compensation and unexercised stock options like Mr. Cheney's as "retained ties" to a company. Mr. Cheney holds 433,333 options on Halliburton stock, which he has publicly disclosed.
"Now, who's minding the store while all of this is happening?" Mr. Kerry asked. "We need a commander in chief and vice president of the United States of America who put the interests of our troops and our taxpayers ahead of their big-money friends."
Mr. Cheney's tax returns from 2001, 2002 and 2003 show he received a total of $1,997,525 in bonuses and deferred compensation.
Bush campaign officials said that before entering office in 2001, Mr. Cheney bought an insurance policy on his Halliburton compensation to guarantee that he would receive a set amount of money each year regardless of the fortunes of the company. The officials said Mr. Cheney's action, a common practice of executives who move to government, was within ethical guidelines and neutralized Mr. Cheney's ties to Halliburton.
"John Kerry's latest personal attack has as much accuracy as a Kitty Kelley novel," a spokesman for Mr. Kerry's campaign, Steve Schmidt, said, alluding to the writer of a book about the Bush family the campaign has attacked as rubbish.
Although Mr. Kerry has mocked Mr. Cheney about his ties to Halliburton in the past, his appearance at the forum was the first time he went into detail about Halliburton, which has been trying to tamp down accusations and investigations on overcharging. Mr. Kerry said Halliburton had charged the government $186 million for meals that it never served to American troops and overcharged the government by $61 million for importing fuel to Iraq.
Mr. Bush addressed the fuel charge last year. He said, "If there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid." The meal and fuel charges are now subjects of Pentagon audits.
Mr. Bush's campaign responded to the no-bid accusation by saying that Halliburton's bids in the last six months were competitive, and that earlier no-bid contracts had been given to Halliburton because it had years of experience of moving quickly in emergencies like that of Iraq.
Bush campaign officials also made available to reporters Representative Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. Mr. Davis said the disputes over charges were not unusual.
"There is no evidence of a deliberate overcharge," Mr. Davis said. "But there are some things where there is no documentation, and they won't get paid. But that's not uncommon in a war zone."
In North Carolina, Mr. Bush appeared to allude to a forthcoming report by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq, when he acknowledged that "we didn't find the stockpiles we thought we would find" of unconventional weapons in Iraq. The president insisted that President Saddam Hussein had the intent to build them.
That declaration on weapons is widely expected to be supported by Mr. Duelfer's report, which will find that clandestine laboratories run by Iraq's now-defunct intelligence serve could have produced small quantities of chemical and biological agents, but probably for selective use and not to attack cities or troops.
"Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision," Mr. Bush said, repeating a line from his stump speech.
On another day of charges and countercharges, Mr. Bush's campaign said Mr. Kerry had his own ties to Halliburton by way of David M. Marchick, a fund-raiser for Mr. Kerry who, the Bush campaign said, was a lobbyist for Kellogg Brown & Root, part of Halliburton.
Officials at Mr. Kerry's campaign said Mr. Marchick was a lawyer at Covington & Burling here who had Halliburton as a client.
A spokesman for the campaign, David Wade, said, "If there's one person on the Halliburton payroll Americans should have a beef with, his name is Dick Cheney."
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Jump to TO Features for Sunday September 19, 2004
DrMaddVibe
09-20-2004, 03:53 PM
Oh...but look the left already has it on paper...they want a draft....
Rep. Rangel introduces bill to reinstate draft
Legislation's goal to increase white, affluent military enlistment
By Jodi Enda
Published: Thursday, January 9, 2003
Article Tools: Page 1 of 1
WASHINGTON -- Three decades after the military draft ended, a small group of Democratic lawmakers wants to bring it back. They seek to spread the risks and burdens of a possible war with Iraq to the white, middle- and upper-middle class men and women who seldom volunteer to serve in the armed forces.
A bill introduced Tuesday by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York is unlikely to become law -- the Pentagon opposes it -- but it throws a spotlight on issues of patriotism, sacrifice and fairness in an all-volunteer military that in its enlisted ranks is disproportionately poor and African-American or Hispanic.
Rangel, a vocal opponent of war with Iraq, proposes drafting 18- to 26-year-old men and women for military duty or national service. He would eliminate the exemptions for college or graduate school students that allowed many white, middle- and upper-middle class men to avoid fighting an unpopular war in Vietnam a generation ago.
If President Bush declares war, Rangel said, he should ensure that Americans from all walks of life fight in it.
"I truly believe that those who make the decisions and those who support the United States going to war would feel more readily the pain that's involved, the sacrifice that's involved, if they thought that the fighting force would include the affluent and those who have historically avoided this great responsibility," said Rangel, a decorated veteran of the Korean War.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected Rangel's proposal out of hand.
"We're not going to reimplement a draft. There is no need for it at all," Rumsfeld told reporters.
The current military prepared for war, and a universal draft would be costly and ineffective because it would require the military to train soldiers to serve for very short periods of time, he said.
"We have people serving today -- God bless 'em --because they volunteered. They want to be doing what it is they're doing," Rumsfeld said.
Politically, the proposal also is likely to run into problems in the Republican-controlled Congress.
"I've got some serious concerns," said Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee. "This is not a new proposal. It's been debated at various times since the draft was placed in inactive status. The Department of Defense and the military services commands all oppose the idea and feel that the volunteer service is working extraordinarily well on all levels. It's hard to disagree with that."
But Rangel's proposal raises anew questions that go to the heart of America's concept of equality. Already, it has created strange alliances: Conscientious objectors have sided with the Pentagon while other notable Vietnam War foes have joined the call for conscription.
"I'm dead set against us declaring war on Iraq. But if we're going to do it, if that's what the country wants, then everybody should participate on equal footing," said former South Dakota senator George McGovern, a World War II bomber pilot who ran for president in 1972 on a Democratic anti-war platform.
"That never happened in Vietnam," McGovern said. "It was always the minorities and the poor fighting and dying. If we're going to go to war with Iraq, a rich Harvard or Stanford student ought to be as subject to the draft as a poor kid of any kind."
"I'm opposed to deferment. We should never repeat that injustice," he said in a telephone interview.
McGovern said his position was a logical way to oppose war.
"It might cause some of the people who think going to war is a good thing to think twice about it if they think their sons or grandsons or nephews would be in it," he said.
But Brian Cross, a director of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif., said renewing the draft is "a very bad idea." He said the argument posed by Rangel and McGovern that a draft could help deter war is akin to "hostage-taking," adding, "The young people of America don't need to be Charlie Rangel's hostage."
William Galston, the director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, praised the draft as a form of public service.
"We've constructed a notion of citizenship that is all rights and no responsibilities," said Galston. "I don't think that's good for the country in the long run."
In the last Congress, according to Rangel, only one member had a child who'd enlisted in the military, although several lawmakers were parents of officers.
Rangel presented Pentagon statistics showing that African Americans comprise 22 percent of enlisted men and women in the military. They represent less than 13 percent of all Americans, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
The story of African American Vietnam War fatalities is complicated. Between 1961 and 1966, African Americans comprised about 10 percent of U.S. men at arms but accounted for almost 20 percent of Vietnam combat fatalities, according to the Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. Under heavy criticism, the Army and Marine Corps worked to reduce black casualties after 1966. By the war's end, African American combat deaths amounted to about 12 percent, slightly above their proportion of the U.S. population.
The Oxford Companion to American Military History, a standard war reference, notes that during the height of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, between 1965 and 1969, African Americans made up 15 percent of combat fatalities. In that period, they comprised 11 percent of the U.S. population and 12.6 percent of the soldiers in Vietnam.
The draft, requiring two years of military service, ended as American troops pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, and registration halted two years later. Former President Jimmy Carter reinstated registration after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980.
--(KRT) Knight Ridder
Notice it's a dem! Not Bush!
Steve Savicki
09-20-2004, 04:07 PM
"This election is about choices. The most important choices a president makes are about protecting America at home and around the world. A president's first obligation is to make America safer, stronger and truer to our ideals.
Three years ago, the events of September 11 reminded every American of that obligation. That day brought to our shores the defining struggle of our times: the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism. And it made clear that our most important task is to fight and to win the war on terrorism.
In fighting the war on terrorism, my principles are straight forward. The terrorists are beyond reason. We must destroy them. As president, I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies. But billions of people around the world yearning for a better life are open to America's ideals. We must reach them.
To win, America must be strong. And America must be smart. The greatest threat we face is the possibility Al Qaeda or other terrorists will get their hands on a nuclear weapon.
To prevent that from happening, we must call on the totality of America's strength -- strong alliances, to help us stop the world's most lethal weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands. A powerful military, transformed to meet the new threats of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And all of America's power -- our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, the appeal of our values -- each of which is critical to making America more secure and preventing a new generation of terrorists from emerging.
National security is a central issue in this campaign. We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made and the choices I would make to fight and win the war on terror.
That means we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.
This month, we passed a cruel milestone: more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq. Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains, overwhelmingly, an American burden. Nearly 90 percent of the troops -- and nearly 90 percent of the casualties -- are American. Despite the president's claims, this is not a grand coalition.
Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery, skill and resolve. Their service humbles all of us. When I speak to them when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this: we owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do and what is still to be done.
In June, the president declared, "The Iraqi people have their country back." Just last week, he told us: "This country is headed toward democracy. Freedom is on the march."
But the administration's own official intelligence estimate, given to the president last July, tells a very different story.
According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the president is saying to the American people.
So do the facts on the ground.
Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis.
42 Americans died in Iraq in June -- the month before the handover. But 54 died in July -- 66 in August and already 54 halfway through September.
And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August -- more than in any other month since the invasion.
We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever widening war-zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times -- a 400% increase.
Falluja, Ramadi, Samarra, even parts of Baghdad -- are now "no go zones" -- breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. The radical Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad.
Violence against Iraqis from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation is on the rise.
Basic living conditions are also deteriorating.
Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day.
Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school.
Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys.
Yes, there has been some progress, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Schools, shops and hospitals have been opened. In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails.
But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they're sitting on the fence instead of siding with us against the insurgents.
That is the truth -- the truth that the commander in chief owes to our troops and the American people.
It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it's essential if we want to correct our course and do what's right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
I know this dilemma first-hand. After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power. We still do.
Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
The president has said that he "miscalculated" in Iraq and that it was a "catastrophic success." In fact, the president has made a series of catastrophic decisions from the beginning in Iraq. At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.
The first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people.
He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.
By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.
His two main rationales -- weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection -- have been proved false by the president's own weapons inspectors and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.
The president also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq.
He didn't tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed, for years, not months. He didn't tell us that he wouldn't take the time to assemble a broad and strong coalition of allies. He didn't tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn't tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.
And America will pay an even heavier price for the president's lack of candor.
At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.
Abroad, other countries will be reluctant to follow America when we seek to rally them against a common menace -- as they are today. Our credibility in the world has plummeted.
In the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos, as proof. De Gaulle waved the photos away, saying: "The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."
How many world leaders have that same trust in America's president, today?
This president's failure to tell the truth to us before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.
The president now admits to "miscalculations" in Iraq.
That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment -- and judgment is what we look for in a president.
This is all the more stunning because we're not talking about 20/20 hindsight. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings... major outside studies... and even some in the administration itself... predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq.
This president was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences.
The administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators. They were wrong.
They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure. They were wrong.
They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong.
They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong.
They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.
In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.
In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.
General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq. He was retired. Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said that Iraq would cost as much as $200 billion. He was fired. After the successful entry into Baghdad, George Bush was offered help from the UN -- and he rejected it. He even prohibited any nation from participating in reconstruction efforts that wasn't part of the original coalition -- pushing reluctant countries even farther away. As we continue to fight this war almost alone, it is hard to estimate how costly that arrogant decision was. Can anyone seriously say this president has handled Iraq in a way that makes us stronger in the war on terrorism?
By any measure, the answer is no. Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all time low.
Think about it for a minute. Consider where we were... and where we are. After the events of September 11, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in the struggle against the terrorists. On September 12, headlines in newspapers abroad declared "we are all Americans now." But through his policy in Iraq, the president squandered that moment and rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.
We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat to our security. It had not, as the vice president claimed, "reconstituted nuclear weapons."
The president's policy in Iraq took our attention and resources away from other, more serious threats to America.
Threats like North Korea, which actually has weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal, and is building more under this president's watch -- the emerging nuclear danger from Iran -- the tons and kilotons of unsecured chemical and nuclear weapons in Russia -- and the increasing instability in Afghanistan.
Today, warlords again control much of that country, the Taliban is regrouping, opium production is at an all time high and the Al Qaeda leadership still plots and plans, not only there but in 60 other nations. Instead of using U.S. forces, we relied on the warlords to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in the mountains. He slipped away. We then diverted our focus and forces from the hunt for those responsible for September 11 in order invade Iraq.
We know Iraq played no part in September 11 and had no operational ties to Al Qaeda.
The president's policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem he said he was trying to prevent. Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before the war. Now it is, and they are operating against our troops. Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who someday could hit the United States.
We know that while Iraq was a source of friction, it was not previously a source of serious disagreement with our allies in Europe and countries in the Muslim world.
The president's policy in Iraq divided our oldest alliance and sent our standing in the Muslim world into free fall. Three years after 9/11, even in many moderate Muslim countries like Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey, Osama bin Laden is more popular than the United States of America.
Let me put it plainly: The president's policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security. It has weakened it.
Two years ago, Congress was right to give the president the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This president, any president would have needed the threat of force to act effectively. This president misused that authority.
The power entrusted to the president gave him a strong hand to play in the international community. The idea was simple. We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam: disarm or be disarmed.
A month before the war, President Bush told the nation: "If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail." He said that military action wasn't "unavoidable."
Instead, the president rushed to war without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted without making sure our troops had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead without understanding or preparing for the consequences of the post-war. None of which I would have done.
Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way. How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no -- because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.
Now the president, in looking for a new reason, tries to hang his hat on the "capability" to acquire weapons. But that was not the reason given to the nation; it was not the reason Congress voted on; it's not a reason, it's an excuse. Thirty-five to forty countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003. Is President Bush saying we should invade them?
I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein -- who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.
The president's insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future. And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new direction that makes our troops and America safer. It is time, at long last, to ask the questions and insist on the answers from the commander in chief about his serious misjudgments and what they tell us about his administration and the president himself. If George W. Bush is re-elected, he will cling to the same failed policies in Iraq -- and he will repeat, somewhere else, the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure than we can or should be.
In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands. But we cannot throw up our hands. We cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America's security for years to come.
All across this country people ask me what we should do now. Every step of the way, from the time I first spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out specific recommendations about how we should and should not proceed. But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way. This is stubborn incompetence.
Five months ago, in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the president was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day, this president makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq -- harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago. It is time to recognize what is -- and what is not -- happening in Iraq today. And we must act with urgency.
Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said we're "in deep trouble in Iraq ... it doesn't add up ... to a pretty picture [and] ... we're going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy." Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.
We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.
First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone. It is late; the president must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.
Last spring, after too many months of resistance and delay, the president finally went back to the U.N. which passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do -- but it was late.
That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops, trainers for Iraq's security forces, a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission, more financial assistance, and real debt relief.
Three months later, not a single country has answered that call. And the president acts as if it doesn't matter.
And of the $13 billion previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.
The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly. He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq's borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq's future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq's oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.
This will be difficult. I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning. Delay has made only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq. But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to succeed.
Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.
Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces.
But guess what? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth. For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained, by the administration's own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program. Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?
The president should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries. And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.
Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.
Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq. It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.
One year ago, the administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than a $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we had to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability. Now we're paying the price.
Now, the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects, and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton. He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.
Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.
Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement.
Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role. Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt. Because the security situation is so bad and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission, the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.
The president should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force. This won't be easy. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.
If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces, train the Iraqis to provide their own security, develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year -- we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.
This is what has to be done. This is what I would do as president today. But we cannot afford to wait until January. President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.
The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear: We must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden. We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction, because that's essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it's up to them to run their own country. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
On May 1 of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now infamous banner that read "Mission Accomplished." He declared to the American people: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come. The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective -- a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve.
In Iraq, this administration's record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment of historic proportions.
At every critical juncture in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism, the president has made the wrong choice. I have a plan to make America stronger.
The president often says that in a post 9/11 world, we can't hesitate to act. I agree. But we should not act just for the sake of acting. I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly.
George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do.
George Bush has not told the truth to the American people about why we went to war and how the war is going. I have and I will continue to do so.
I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war against terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror -- and make us safer.
Today, because of George Bush's policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans.
If you share my conviction that we can not go on as we are that we can make America stronger and safer than it is then November 2 is your chance to speak and to be heard. It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.
I'm convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start and move more effectively to accomplish our goals. Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, and America's sake, we must get this right. We must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. "
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