Lynn C. Woolsey: “the time has come for a new national security strategy because our current path will only lead to future acts of…”

“the time has come for a new national security strategy because our current path will only lead to future acts of terrorism and an increasingly insecure United States of America. Most Americans understand that the best way to protect our country is through smarter policies right here at home, not through aggressive military combat abroad. In fact, a poll released today indicates that support for the war in Iraq is at its lowest level yet. Maybe that is because most Americans know that Iraq never possessed weapons of mass destruction, never had a connection to al Qaeda, and never played a role in the terrorist attacks of September 11. Yet the Bush administration claimed each of these examples as fact in order to justify going to a war in Iraq and just over 2 years ago the U.S. invaded Iraq. Since then, more than 1,600 American soldiers, at least 24,000 noninsurgents Iraqi civilians, have paid for this false war with their lives, and over 12,000 American soldiers have been wounded forever. Clearly the Presidential national security platform is not just immoral, it is incompetent. There has to be a better way, a better way than this. Fortunately, there is. Earlier tonight I reintroduced the SMART Security resolution for the 21st century. SMART security clearly has increasing support among Members of Congress because at the end of the 108th Congress we had 50 cosponsors to the SMART security bill.…”