Byron Dorgan: “the policy in Iraq is not working and must change. The current plan does not have incentives that encourage the Iraqis…”

“the policy in Iraq is not working and must change. The current plan does not have incentives that encourage the Iraqis to take full responsibility for their own security or to make the difficult compromises necessary for a unity government to work. We have been in Iraq fighting this war for more than 3 years. The United States has sent hundreds of thousands of our finest troops to liberate Iraq from a brutal dictator. More than 2,500 have died for Iraq's freedom and close to 20,000 have been wounded, many very seriously. America has also spent more than $300 billion fighting the war in Iraq. Those sacrifices continue. We have about 130,000 troops in Iraq today and, regrettably, we will have more deaths and injuries before this war is over. We will also continue to spend tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars more in fighting this war. I believe that we need a change and we need a change now. That change is the Levin-Reed amendment currently before us. This amendment says that we will begin a phased redeployment of our troops by the end of 2006. This will force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own security and to do so soon. They will have to replace our redeployed troops with Iraqi troops. This will create incentives to build their own police and military because some time soon they will not be able to count on Americans doing those jobs.…”