U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

Committee News

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Lantos Expresses Disappointment in President’s Plan for Iraq as Laid Out Tonight

“I oppose the so-called surge that constitutes the centerpiece of the President’s plan. Our efforts in Iraq are a mess, and throwing in more troops will not improve it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, together with myself and other committee heads on Capitol Hill, have repeatedly called for a phased reduction of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Nothing in the President’s speech changes that.

“Our country would not be in this predicament now had there been sufficient forces committed to the effort years ago. General Eric Shinseki recommended, and I strongly supported, sending in hundreds of thousands of well-protected soldiers to prevent any possibility of bloodshed beyond direct confrontation with Saddam’s troops. This would have brought major combat operations to a swift close and left plenty of personnel to guard against a flare-up of fighting, not to mention the looting, vandalism and general chaos that ensued.

“When I toured northern Iraq by helicopter with General David Petraeus, who was then in charge of our forces there, he pointed to vast ammunition caches that could not be secured because he did not have enough soldiers to assign to such duty. We will never know how much of that ammunition has since been used against our troops and innocent Iraqi civilians.

“It is too late to address this and numerous other problems that arose from insufficient commitment of resources to the invasion, which was based on bad information from the start. You cannot unscramble an omelet. And you certainly can’t make it any more palatable by adding more of the same ingredients. With Iraq sliding into civil war and the Iraqi government still not showing sufficient determination to disarm the militias, we need to involve other parties in the region to take more responsibility for creating a stable Iraq with lasting and meaningful reconstruction.”

On Thursday afternoon Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will brief the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on diplomatic efforts to improve the future in Iraq. Next week, hearings are planned with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and leaders of the Iraq Study Group, including former Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton.