Bobby Scott: “Before we respond to the President's call for an additional 20,000 troops in Iraq, we must put his call in the context…”

“Before we respond to the President's call for an additional 20,000 troops in Iraq, we must put his call in the context of the history of the war, beginning with the discussion of what the current 130,000 troops are doing there now. The original reasons we were provided with the rationale for going to war, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraqi leaders were connected with the 9/11 attacks, and that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States, all turned out not to be true. Saddam Hussein was captured and recently hanged, al-Zarqawi is dead, and Iraq held democratic elections over a year ago, and yet we are still in Iraq. Throughout the war, the President has attempted to associate our presence in Iraq with a so-called war on terrorism. The truth is that our presence in Iraq has actually increased our risk to terrorism. Furthermore, the term 'war on terrorism' is a rhetorical term without any relationship to reality. Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. The enemy is al Qaeda. We attacked Afghanistan because al Qaeda was there, not in Iraq. The President is now saying he is laying out a new mission in Iraq, thereby clearly acknowledging that, whatever the old mission was, it was not working. But there is still no clearly defined end goal and no clearly defined explanation of how failure or success can be measured.”