Iraq

Floor Speech

IRAQ -- (Senate - September 21, 2007)

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we have had a very good, healthy debate in the Senate this week on the subject of the war in Iraq. Sometimes it has been more spirited than usual. At times, it was spirited to the point where some things were said that perhaps did not further a good constructive debate but took the debate a little bit downhill. We in the Senate recognize it is our job to bring forward the issues, to discuss the very difficult considerations that are before us as a Congress, but to always do it in a manner that reflects the level of civility a truly good discourse, a good debate should bring.

I had an opportunity a couple days ago to speak with a general from my home State. I asked him for his comments on what he was seeing as he was watching our debate. He said: Senator, the debate has been good. The debate has been healthy. There clearly are different perspectives that are coming out on the floor, but through it all, no one has foresworn the soldier. He said: That makes me feel good as an American, certainly good as a military leader.

That is important to remember, that in the heat of debate, we not foreswear our military, that we always honor and respect that which they do in such an honorable way.

I personally want to thank Senator Webb, the junior Senator from Virginia, for bringing forth an issue this week. This was the amendment he introduced that related to the amount of dwell time, the amount of time deployed versus the amount of time a serviceman stays at home. It was important for us to focus on the support side of our military. We know that those who are serving us over in Iraq and Afghanistan, and truly in all parts of the world, where they are separated from their families, are at their best and serving us to their fullest when they are able to focus on their job.

For those families who remain behind, who miss not having dad or mom at home or miss not having their husband or their wife with them, they wish the circumstances were otherwise. But we know that the families who have stood behind our service men and women, allowing them to serve--it is these families, too, who are serving our country. We need to recognize the sacrifices those families also make. They may not be on the front lines, but there is no shortage of worry and concern and true anxiety over the health and safety of their loved ones. We put our military families through a great deal of stress at a time of war particularly.

Just as we can never adequately tell our service men and women thank you enough, neither can we say thank you enough to the families who provide that support. I thank Senator Webb for reminding us of the obligation we owe to the military families themselves.

We all have our own stories of the exchanges we have had with the military families in our respective States. A situation that is very clear in my mind, even well over a year later, was an incident that happened in July 2006. This was, specifically, July 27 in Fort Wainwright, AK, near Fairbanks, where it was publicly announced that the men and women of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team were going to be extended in Iraq for 120 days. There was some uncertainty as to whether it was just 120 days or whether it would go even beyond. This Stryker Brigade had been serving very admirably, honorably in a difficult part of Iraq and had been there for a year. This decision literally pulled the rug out from under the families and the community in Fairbanks. It was a surprise, a shock to the servicemembers and their families.

At the time that extension was announced, some elements of the 172nd had already returned home. They were back in Alaska. There were airplanes that were transporting other elements back home that literally turned around in midair when they got the notice of the extension. Soldiers who had remained behind in Iraq were packing up the unit. They had heard the rumors that they might be extended. Unfortunately, they heard it from their family members back in Fairbanks, who had heard it on the news and then contacted their loved ones over in Iraq. They made some very difficult phone calls confirming that, in fact, the rumors were true.

This was an absolutely unacceptable situation. It is one thing to be prepared for an extension. It is one thing to know this is your commitment. But when your family is anxiously awaiting you, when you are anxiously awaiting your return after a year's service in combat, it was horrible for the families.

I was in Fort Wainwright a couple days after the announcement of the extension. At the front gate of the post they have a chain-link fence that goes for a mile or so. In anticipation of the return of their loved ones, families had pulled together the homemade banners saying, ``Welcome home, Daddy. We miss you, we love you, we can't wait to see you.'' Those signs, some of them clearly in children's writing, absolutely broke one's heart because those signs were made with great anticipation and then put up on the fence. They were not going to be seeing dad that next day or that next week. They were not going to be seeing their husband as a consequence of the extension. As a consequence of that extension, there were a few who never came home at all.

This was a difficult situation, of course, for the families, for the soldiers. It certainly brought me much closer to many of those military families. It caused me to set in mind a singular goal: that we were going to bring the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team home without any further extension. This was tough enough, this 120-day extension, but we were going to make sure there was no further extension.

To the Army's credit, they stepped up to the plate. They brought a very extensive menu of family support services that we had never seen before.

The Fairbanks community, which has always been

extremely welcoming, loving toward our military--gave an outpouring of support. They truly went above and beyond.

The other thing we saw at that time was the strength of the family readiness groups, the women, the wives who had for a year been holding everybody together, encouraging the younger wives who had never gone through deployment. There was a great deal of camaraderie, a great deal of support. The support from those family readiness groups helped them get through the additional 120 days.

In December of last year, the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team came home. There was no further extension. They were able to be home for Christmas. They were able to return because another unit that was ready to go broke dwell and went over early to relieve the 172nd. That speaks volumes about the sacrifices the men and the women of our military and their military families make every day supporting our Nation and supporting each other.

I was at Fort Wainwright in December when the returning soldiers were arriving. I spent one afternoon greeting planeload after planeload of soldiers. We were in a hangar where they were checking in weapons and awaiting transport to greet the families. These soldiers, from the junior enlisted up to the rank of colonel, were extremely positive about the work in Iraq. They told me, absolutely, they were making a difference. They were tired after 16 months of combat. They were absolutely elated to be home. They were very proud of themselves, of their colleagues, as we were proud of them.

As I was standing in line, there was one young man from North Pole, AK, which is not too far from Fort Wainwright. I said: So you are home. What are you going to be doing?

He said: I have a house. My house is going to be kind of the welcome home, the party house, if you will, for all the single guys and all the guys whose girlfriends have left them in the past year, for those guys whose wives are not going to be here.

He got very serious in that conversation.

I said: Do you have a lot of those men who have come home to find that their relationships are no longer intact?

He said: Yes, it is an unfortunate part. But we have been gone for a long time.

He was a young man who was single. But that, too, pulls at your heart, to know that you come home after serving your country and the relationship you had worked so hard to build prior to your departure is now no longer there.

The extension of the 172nd made me angry at that time, very angry, very frustrated--and not necessarily because our soldiers were extended. We know that it is the soldiers' creed that you put your mission before yourself. You never quit.

But I was upset because our soldiers and our families were forced to endure an abrupt reversal of what they had been promised. They had been promised: You are going to be home in a year, and they were not back in a year. Their families had been promised: You have to wait this long, but it turned out not to be true.

I have young kids. The Presiding Officer has young children. The Presiding Officer knows how children wait for something, whether it is a holiday or school to start or school to end. They put it on the calendar, and they count the days down. When the calendar has run out and that much-anticipated episode is supposed to happen and it does not happen, the disappointment of the child is very difficult. It is difficult as an adult to bear it, but we see what our children go through with extensions like this. It does make you angry that we failed to keep our promise.

Now, I have had many opportunities to meet with the spouses of those who are serving, both men and women. I have had an opportunity to meet with the family readiness groups. I think probably the most difficult meeting of any I have had with family members was a sitdown, literally a sitdown on the floor of a classroom at an elementary school on post. Children of the deployed military men and women got together for a counseling session with the school counselor. I was touring the school at the time and was able to meet with the kids and sit down in a circle as they were drawing cards to send to their mostly dads over in Iraq--there were a couple over in Afghanistan--and to talk to these children about their life with their parent gone, and gone for a long time in a child's eyes.

I talked to one little girl. She was 11 years old. Her dad has been deployed seven times. Now, I did not ask her how long each of those deployments was because when you are 11 years old, seven deployments is a lot of time out of a young girl's life. We have to remember not only--not only--what is happening in the military fight, not only what is happening on the streets of Baghdad, but we need to always keep in mind what our military families are doing in their service to support their loved ones who are serving us. So these were the considerations which were on my mind and wrestling with when we took up the Webb amendment this week.

It is important for people to understand the U.S. Army has a policy that one-to-one dwell time--in other words, 1 day deployed, 1 day home--one-to-one dwell time is the minimum acceptable dwell. This is not only to allow soldiers the opportunity to reset but also to meet the training and force structure needs. It is the minimum necessary to balance reliance on the use of the Active and the Reserve Forces.

I keep saying this is the minimum time. It is not an ideal period. The Army would actually prefer to adhere to its existing policy of 1 year in combat, 2 years out for the Active Forces. But the Army knows it cannot comply with its existing policy and meet the demands of staffing our efforts abroad. The Army discovered it could not comply as soon as this policy was announced.

When you think about that, you say: What does this say? What does this mean as far as our level of preparedness? Being prepared for war is not just making sure you have equipment you need. You have to have that human equipment. When we talk about resetting our equipment, we also need to be talking about resetting the human--the mind, the body, the spirit, and the attitude.

So when the Webb amendment was before us, I reviewed it very carefully. Contrary to some of the assertions made by some on this floor that I was strong-armed by the administration, that was not my situation. I sought out individuals whose judgment I trust. I did talk with several generals to understand the implications of the policy that was suggested--an inflexible policy, a policy that says it will be a one-to-one dwell time but without any flexibility.

I was concerned that in an effort to make sure this administration is paying attention to the military families, making sure we are giving the time we need to reset the soldier, that we were not locking ourselves into something that ties the hands of our generals, ties the hands of our military planners, and, as a consequence, yields unintended consequences that could possibly further jeopardize the safety and the security of those who are serving us in Iraq.

I did have an opportunity to meet with two of the senior military leaders. The senior Senator from Virginia had arranged for a meeting for several of us who had questions about this issue: Tell us what the implications of this policy are.

I sat down with one general who happens to be an Alaskan by choice, General Lovelace. He served several tours over at Fort Richardson and also with the Alaska Command at Elmendorf Air Force Base which is where I had known him previously. General Lovelace and General Hamm described the consequences our troops on the ground would face if the amendment before us at that time had been adopted. They mentioned a shortage of people to protect our troops from the IEDs, the improvised explosive devices. They talked about a shortage of truck drivers and mechanics, a shortage of infantry, quite possibly a shortage of senior noncommissioned officers and midcareer officers, greater reliance on Reserve and Guard than is presently contemplated, and possibly further extensions of units that are presently in theater.

I thought about all of those, and while I do not know that all of them would have come true if we had adopted the Webb amendment this week, it concerned me greatly to think that through implementation of this amendment you could have the further extension of the units that are presently in Iraq, operating under an understanding they will be home by X date, and their family is operating under that similar assumption.

That caused me great concern.

I made contact with the general who had been at Fort Wainwright at the time the 172nd had been extended. He is now the general at Fort Lewis with that Stryker Brigade unit. I asked him: Walk me through the implications. What would it have meant to the 172nd? What can it mean to your brigade at Fort Lewis? He reiterated several of the things I had learned in my conversations with General Lovelace and General Hamm. He also spoke to the strength of support that comes from the family readiness units that operate as a unit.

One of the concerns that an inflexible policy would bring is you would--in order to get some of these specialists I referred to, either additional infantrymen or additional mechanics, in certain areas or those who are skilled with the IEDs, disabling them--in order to make sure you have enough on the ground, you would have to be plucking from different units.

I thought back to what we learned there at Fort Wainwright. The thing that held those families together when they learned their husband, their brother, their son was not going to be coming home and instead was going to be extended another 120 days was the strength of that family readiness core unit. It had held everybody together.

If you separate those within the unit, you lose some of the strength and support because one of the families that had been a key member of that team has now been pulled to another unit. You lose some of the strength we have to provide for our soldiers as they are serving us. That is important to remember.

Supporting the troops, supporting their families means, first and foremost, we want to bring our troops home alive. We know military medicine is doing its part to treat those who have been injured, treating them in an expeditious manner. We are saving lives in Iraq today that would have been lost in Vietnam. That is a credit to so many. But still, the best way to come home alive is not to be injured at all.

This is what I had to come to grips with this week as we were debating this issue--whether adoption of an inflexible policy that might tie the hands of our military leaders, whether that would mean there are fewer people who would be watching the backs of the service men and women on the battlefield.

I do believe our current dwell policy must be revisited. For this time, for 2007 and 2008, what we have in place, the 15 months that have been accepted for this 12-month dwell period, it is not a perfect solution at all. I do not like it. I do not think our military leaders like it. They would prefer we were in a better place so we could provide for that equal dwell time. So I think it is important that even though the Webb amendment is no longer before us--it did not achieve the 60 votes--that we do not just kind of move on now, go to another aspect, and say the issue of dwell time is not important to us, is not important to those who are serving and their military families who are providing that support back home.

It has been suggested we could revise this policy as early as next year without causing this chaos which has been described by some of the generals. It is something we should be looking at. When we think about how we support those who are serving us, we have to remember it is unfair to our service men and our service women--who have already encountered personnel policies that turn on a dime, with multiple deployments and extensions--to endure safety risks that directly flow from an inflexible policy that keeps qualified and competent people off the battlefield.

I said--and I will repeat--the current rotation may not be ideal. I don't think it is ideal. The military needs to be honest about not pushing people who are not fit for the battlefield into combat, and it needs to be honest in compensating people who have suffered debilitating mental health conditions and not take the easy way out of discharging based upon personality disorders.

The military needs to address these issues on an individual basis, and the Senate should hold them to it. We know the current rotation policy may very well cause some individuals to leave the service prematurely, but it will also cause others to step up and say: I have a great deal more to give, and I am not going to abandon my buddy.

When the Nation goes to war, we promise each and every individual on the battlefield that they will have the best support this Nation can muster. When we take people who are capable of performing off the battlefield, we have the potential to jeopardize the safety of those who remain.

The Presiding Officer was not here when I began my remarks, and I began those remarks by acknowledging what the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Virginia, has done in focusing the Senate's attention on the families of those who serve. I greatly appreciate that. I also appreciate the level of debate, the level of concern, and the level of genuine caring to make sure our policies do right by those who serve this country, not only on the battlefield but for those who are serving at home. I don't believe that debate or this discussion is over by any stretch of the imagination, but as we continue to debate the direction of this war, we should always make sure we are recognizing all who are serving.

I want to take just a very brief moment, as I have had an opportunity to join with my colleague, Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, in introducing an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act. This amendment calls for a civilian and diplomatic surge in Iraq. We spend a lot of time talking on this floor about the military component, what our force strength is, the relative success or failures in certain parts of Iraq. There has been a lot of focus on that aspect of the war. Yet as we talk to our military leaders, we hear from them that it is not a military solution alone. There must be a political resolve as well, and that political resolve must come about through diplomatic channels and resources and truly on the civilian side.

When General Petraeus was before the Foreign Relations Committee a week or so ago, I asked him at that time if he believed the civilian surge was adequate; did he have the assistance he needed to do the job, to complete the task. He said certain elements of our Government are at war, but not all of the others. We can use help in those areas, whether it is the Ministry of Agriculture or Treasury. There are areas that can be identified. So I have joined with Senator Casey in calling for an equal push on the diplomatic front and on the civilian side. There is more that we can do and more that we should do so we are able to see the progress that all of us wish to see in the war in Iraq.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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