Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly on what is a roiling debate not only in the Senate but across the country, and that is the President's policy with respect to Iraq. There are countless reasons the American people have lost confidence in the President's Iraq policy, but chief among them has been the administration's insistence on making promises and assurances about progress and victory that do not appear to be grounded in the reality of the facts. We have been told we would be greeted as liberators. We have been promised the insurgency was in its last throes. We have been assured again and again that we are making progress and that the Iraqis would soon stand up so we could stand down and our brave sons and daughters could start coming home. We have been asked to wait, we have been asked to be patient, and we have been asked to give the President and the new Iraqi Government 6 more months, and then 6 more months after that, and then 6 more months after that.
Now, after the loss of more than 3,000 American lives, after spending almost $400 billion, after Iraq has descended into civil war, we have been promised, once again, that the President's plan to escalate the war in Iraq will, this time, be well planned, well coordinated, and well supported by the Iraqi Government. This time, we didn't have to wait to find out that none of this seems to be the case. Already, American military officials have told the New York Times that there is no clear chain of command between Iraqis and U.S. commanders and no real indication that the Iraqis even want such a partnership. Yesterday, Prime Minister al-Maliki, the person whom the President said had brought this plan to us, the man who is supposed to be our partner-in-chief for this new plan, told foreign journalists that if the United States would only give his Army better weapons and equipment, our soldiers could go home.
The President's decision to move forward with this escalation anyway, despite all evidence and military advice to the contrary, is the terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war back in 2002. Over 4 years later, we can't revisit that decision or reverse some of the tragic outcomes, but what we can do is make sure we provide the kind of oversight and constraints on the President this time that we failed to do the last time.
I cannot in good conscience support this escalation. It is a policy which has already been tried and a policy which has failed. Just this morning, I had veterans of the Iraq war visit my office to explain to me that this surge concept is, in fact, no different from what we have repeatedly tried, but with 20,000 troops, we will not in any imaginable way be able to accomplish any new progress.
The fact is that we have tried this road before. In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war. As the President's own military commanders have said, escalation only prevents the Iraqis from taking more responsibility for their own future. It is even eroding our efforts in the wider war on terror as some of the extra soldiers will come directly from Afghanistan, where the Taliban has become resurgent.
The President has offered no evidence that more U.S. troops will be able to pressure Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds toward the necessary political settlement, and he has attached no consequences to his plan should the Iraqis fail to make progress. In fact, just last week, when I repeatedly asked Secretary Rice what would happen if the Iraqi Government failed to meet the benchmarks the President has called for and says are an integral part of their rationale for escalation, she couldn't give me an answer. When I asked her if there were any circumstances whatsoever in which we would tell the Iraqis that their failure to make progress means the end of our military commitment, she could not give me an answer. This is simply not good enough. When you ask how many more months and how many more dollars and how many more lives it will take to end the policy that everyone now knows has not succeeded, "I don't know" isn't good enough.
Over the past 4 years, we have given this administration every chance to get this right, and they have disappointed us many times. But ultimately it is our brave men and women in uniform and their families who bear the greatest burden for these mistakes. They have performed in an exemplary fashion. At no stage have they faltered in the mission that has been presented to them.