Adam Schiff: “the Iraq war is now in its 4th year, and I, like many of my colleagues and millions of my fellow citizens, are troubled…”

“the Iraq war is now in its 4th year, and I, like many of my colleagues and millions of my fellow citizens, are troubled about the direction the conflict is taking. I have been to Iraq three times to visit our troops there, and I have spent time with our wounded here and in Germany. They have done everything we have asked of them, and they have done it magnificently. While we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to avoid having Iraq spiral into an all-out civil war, now is the time for the Iraqis themselves to decide if they wish to be one country. And, Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to take steps that will ensure that 2006 is a year of significant transition to full sovereignty for the people of Iraq. This is a conflict that has come to grief in many ways. In the fall of 2002, I voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq because of the threat that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and because I was concerned that he had an active nuclear weapons program. If you go back and look at the debate in the House and Senate, this was a decision taken by the Congress to prevent Iraq from acquiring or using or transferring nuclear weapons. Months later, as American forces pushed across the Kuwaiti frontier and into Iraq, we were on a hunt for weapons of mass destruction.…”