Tom Lantos: “We are not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We are attempting to referee a religiously based civil war which saps our…”

“We are not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We are attempting to referee a religiously based civil war which saps our strength and destroys our fabric as a society. Our resolution reverses that course. Mr. Speaker, it is too late to go back and make right all that has gone wrong in Iraq, and clearly carrying on with more of the same will do no good. But the administration has yet to learn that you cannot unscramble an omelet. Instead, it is trying to add to the mix another 21,500 men and women who deserve better than that. In pursuing its policies in Iraq, the administration cannot unscramble and undo its many mistakes: buying into rogue and flawed intelligence; disbanding the Iraqi Army; conducting mindless and extreme de-Baathification; permitting the early looting and destruction and violence; allowing the growth of a government based on hate-filled sectarianism; allowing waste, fraud and abuse in the use of U.S.…”