Friends,

Starting this morning the House will begin to debate the moral issue of our times - our continued military occupation of Iraq.  My colleagues and I will have the opportunity to vote on President Bush's escalation - a failed policy from the start, which will only deepen our engagement in the Iraq, and increase the cost to our country in lives, limb and treasury.  The American public has already overwhelmingly voiced their opposition to the President's plan, and now it is our turn, and our responsibility to have our voices heard.

I will support this week's effort, and will cast my vote against the President's proposed escalation, but you all know that I will not stop there, and neither should my colleagues.

Friends,

Over 2,650 lives, and more than $300 billion later, the occupation of Iraq remains one of the greatest leadership failures of our time. President Bush failed to find any WMD's, failed to be honest about the invasion, failed to use a sound military strategy, failed the people of Iraq, and perhaps most importantly, failed us, the American public.

His vendetta in Iraq has cost our country our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. While children struggle to learn in crumbling schools, and families are forced to find a way to put food on their tables, this occupation has cost our country the ability to address our real national priorities.

A short time from now the House will adjourn for several weeks, as we put unfinished legislative business aside and head home for the rest of the summer.  

Tragically, but not surprisingly, we're leaving Washington today without taking any meaningful steps toward reversing the Bush Administration's disastrous Iraq policy.

There is no August recess for the young men and women who are deployed in Iraq, risking their lives for an ideological pipe dream hatched by people who haven't sacrificed a single thing.  

Our soldiers will continue to do their jobs valiantly -- even though they have been failed by their civilian superiors...even though they have been asked to occupy a nation that doesn't want them there...even though they haven't been properly trained or outfitted for their mission...even though they are caught in the crossfire of a brutal civil war that they are virtually powerless to stop.  

On October 11, 2002, the Congress, over the objections of many Members of the House and Senate, passed legislation giving the President the authority to use force in Iraq.  At the time I was a vocal critic of the war, but unfortunately my voice, as well as thousands of others, was drowned out by misinformation from the administration.  

In making its case, the administration threatened us that if we didn't act fast, the proof of Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction would "come in the form of a mushroom cloud."  We were also told that the case against the war, and the evidence of a weapons' program was, "a slam dunk."  Now, three and a half years later, the American public knows what many of us believed all along, that this administration, and our president, misled us about the case to go to war.

Six months after we invaded Iraq, President Bush stood aboard an aircraft carrier before a banner that read "Mission Accomplished," declaring that "major combat operations in Iraq are over."  From that moment on, we were no longer fighting a war, but rather participating in an occupation.

-Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)