Bingaman Floor Speech on Levin-Reed Iraq War Amendment

Sen. Jeff Bingaman strongly backs the Levin-Reed amendment to the defense authorization bill that would have required President Bush to begin drawing down American forces within four months. “It is unfortunate this important amendment was defeated, despite the fact that a majority of senators support it,” Bingaman said after the vote. A release on his website reports:

Bingaman said the war in Iraq has distracted the United States from the fight against terrorism, from responding to the rise of China as a world power, from lessening our dependence on foreign energy, and from keeping our country economically competitive.

Check out:

• Text of Sen. Bingaman's Floor Speech
• Video (wmv) of Sen. Bingaman's Floor Speech

Excerpts:

I opposed the invasion in Iraq, believing it was necessary to give the United Nations weapons inspectors the time that they needed to determine whether Iraq did, in fact, possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. I believed that we needed to gather the facts and we needed to make an informed decision as to whether Iraq posed such a terrible and immediate threat to our country that regime change was warranted.

And as we now know, those WMDs were nowhere to be found.

Unfortunately, the WMDs were not the only thing that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and other members of the administration were wrong about when it came to beginning this war.

They were also wrong in thinking we could succeed in Iraq without substantial help from our allies.

They were wrong to reject warnings that the invasion would fracture Iraq’s delicate sectarian balance.

They were wrong to dismiss legitimate questions about how we would rebuild Iraq’s civil society.

And they were wrong to think that Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular, would ignore their opportunity to fill a regional power vacuum after the collapse of Saddam’s regime.

Above all, they were wrong to promise the American people, as Secretary Rumsfeld’s assistant Ken Adelman did, that Iraq would be a “cakewalk.”

...  Going forward, we need to focus on two objectives.

First, we must send the Iraqi ruling elite a crisp and credible signal that our commitment to maintaining forces in that country is not unconditional. Only by making this point loud and clear do we create the possibility that the Shi’a-led government will take the painful steps necessary towards national reconciliation.

The U.S. has a moral responsibility to do what it can to create a degree of political stability in Iraq. But I repeat the key phrase in that sentence: “do what we can.” For we can do no more.

Our commitment to Iraq is not open-ended. We can’t impose a political settlement without the cooperation of the political elites in the country. The Iraqis themselves must want a solution.

Sen. Bingaman concluded his speech with a salute to the 38 New Mexicans who have so far given their lives in the Iraq War, including names and short bios.