On the recordMarch 27, 2023
Madam President, we will be voting about 5:30, about 30 minutes from now, to end debate and tomorrow have some amendments, then go to final passage on legislation to repeal the authorization to use military force for 2002 directed against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The problem I have with what we are doing is that we are repealing the authorization to use military force because Saddam is dead and that threat is gone, but we are not replacing it with an authorization that our troops desperately need, which is to create an AUMF to allow our military to go after Shiite militias that are attacking them routinely inside of Iraq. There have been over 78 attacks since 2021 directed at U.S. forces by different groups, mostly Shiite militias controlled by Iran, in Iraq and Syria. A couple days ago, there was an attack on an American base in Syria. An American contractor was killed. God bless him and his family. And we retaliated, and they retaliated back. The bottom line is that our response to aggression against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria is woefully inadequate. Seventy-something attacks since 2021. Clearly, nobody feels afraid to attack our troops over there, and we need to create some deterrence that we don't have today.…
Source
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