http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0311/S00041.htmRobert Byrd: A High Price for a Hollow Victory
Thursday, 6 November 2003, 7:08 am
Speech: U.S. Senator
A High Price for a Hollow Victory
Speech By West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd
via t r u t h o u t.org
Monday 03 November 2003
Senator Byrd delivered the following remarks as the Senate debated whether to grant final Congressional approval to the President's $87 billion funding request for the military and Iraqi reconstruction.
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The Iraq supplemental conference report before the Senate today has been widely described as a victory for President Bush. If hardball politics and lock-step partisanship are the stuff of which victory is made, then I suppose the assessments are accurate. But if reasoned discourse, integrity, and accountability are the measures of true victory, then this package falls far short of the mark.
In the end, the President wrung virtually every important concession he sought from the House-Senate conference committee. Key provisions that the Senate had debated extensively, voted on, and included in its version of the bill - such as providing
half of the Iraq reconstruction funding in the form of loans instead of grants - were thrown overboard in the conference agreement. Senators who had made compelling arguments on the Senate floor only days earlier to limit American taxpayers' liability by providing some of the Iraq reconstruction aid in the form of loans suddenly reversed their position in conference and bowed to the power of the presidency.
Before us today is a massive $87 billion supplemental appropriations package that commits this nation to a long and costly occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and yet the collective wisdom of the House and Senate appropriations conference that produced it was little more than a shadow play, choreographed to stifle dissent and rubber stamp the President's request.
Perhaps this take-no-prisoners approach is how the President and his advisers define victory, but I fear they are fixated on the muscle of the politics instead of the wisdom of the policy. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to policy, the Iraq supplemental is a monument to failure.
Consider, for example, that before the war, the President's policy advisers assured the American people that Iraq would largely be able to finance its own reconstruction through oil revenues, seized assets, and increased economic productivity.
The $18 billion in this supplemental earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq is testament to the fallacy of that prediction. It is the American taxpayer, not the Iraqi oil industry, that is being called upon to shoulder the financial burden of rebuilding Iraq.
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Victory is not always about winning. Sometimes, victory is simply about being right. This conference report does not reflect the right policy for Iraq or the right policy for America. I oppose it and I will vote No on final passage.