Schakowsky: Violence is Not Down in Iraq

SCHAKOWSKY: VIOLENCE IS NOT DOWN IN IRAQ

Washington, D.C.–U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a Chief Deputy Whip and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, delivered the following remarks on the House floor in anticipation of General David Petraeus' congressional testimony. General Petraeus will testify today at a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees to give his professional assessment of the situation in Iraq.

"Madam Speaker: Today is an important day in that we are going to hear the anticipated progress report–so called-- by General Petraeus who will be testifying in a short while for the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committee in the House of Representatives. And the case that is going to be made is that there has been just enough progress for staying the course in Iraq.

On August 6th, I was in Iraq and what I learned from that visit that day is that the President's surge has failed and that there is no end in sight for the war in Iraq. I learned that first by talking with the Deputy Prime Minister in Iraq that day who said that the night before that Allawi had pulled his people out of the parliament, and the week before the Sunnis had left, and then what was remaining of the Parliament was on vacation, and he said that there wasn't going to be any political settlement this September, nor would there be one next September, and he didn't say which September.

The point of that is, the reason for the surge was promoted by the President and by General Petraeus, as creating the space for political settlement in Iraq, which has not only not happened, but we have also seen steps backwards. But what's really important today is that people examine the so called evidence that progress has been made, and that's why I've brought a few charts here.

The first one says: "Is there really less violence in Iraq.... Let's look at what is counted, and more importantly, what isn't counted. In the evidence that progress has been made, what's not counted is: Shi'a on Shi'a violence, which is happening in the south in the Basra area, Sunni-on-Sunni violence, car bombings aren't, and get this one, this isn't a joke: people shot in the front of the head are not counted, people shot in the back of the head are counted. I thought at first that it was just an exaggerated joke, but it's true. And finally, large scale bombings like the one that killed 500 ethnic Yezidis in August is not counted. So clearly, these numbers are very clearly cherry-picked.

And then, if you look at a fact that is very important to many Americans, every month in 2007, including the months of the surge, has seen more US military casualties than the same month in 2006. In other words, more and more of our young men are dying. And while the parliament was on vacation, as some commentator said because 'after all it's so hot–120 degrees,' our men and women were fighting with their body armor and weapons out in that 120 degree heat in numbers greater than ever.

And of course not included in those numbers is not only the US troops that have died but also the dollars that have been spent. These are the dollars that we know about right now. Per year, not overall in the war, 120 billion dollars; 10 billion–actually I heard 12 billion is the new number per month; 2 billion per week; per day, 329 million, per hour almost, 14 million dollars per hour, and over 228 thousand dollars have been spent per minute in Iraq.

And yet, the political reconciliation which was the goal of expanding the number of troops that we have in Iraq has actually gone backwards. And so right now what I think we are seeing is a dog and pony show.

The good news, that a lot of people, unlike in the lead up to the war in the first place, aren't buying it. Front page of USA Today: A Record 60% of Americans Seek a Date for a Pullout, Public Wary of Report on Iraq Polls Show. And there have been many reports, the Jones Report which says it isn't working.

Check the information or be skeptical about the progress, let's get out of Iraq....