Special Staff Report from My Rural America, May 1, 2008: Congressman John P. Murtha (D-PA) honored our men and women soldiers today by offering hard facts on the Iraq War to members of the media and other concerned citizens who gathered at the Center for American Progress, five years after the war in Iraq was declared over by President Bush. Murtha is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Defense, and a veteran of the Vietnam War. The following summaries his comments.
To date, there have been over 4,050 Americans killed in Iraq; over 3,900 since President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished.” The U.S. has sustained more than 30,000 casualties. Because Murtha visits our military hospitals frequently, he has seen first hand the horrific burn injuries, amputations, and blindness to our service men and women. These are injuries they will “have to live with the rest of their lives.” Murtha is particularly concerned about Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD. Just two weeks ago, a Rand study concluded that nearly 320,000 military personnel who have been deployed to IraqAfghanistan reported probable traumatic brain injury during deployment. Murtha said, “The U.S. Military did not dispute the figure.”
Murtha described an Iraqi government riddled with corruption and incompetence. While the Administration claims “progress is being made,” he said that of the 18 Iraqi provinces, only 8 are under Iraqi control with a combined population of 6.5 million people, less than 25% of the total population of 27.5 million Iraqis. “This is a fact the Administration fails to mention,” Congressman Murtha stated.
Since 2005, the number of allied troops in Iraq has decreased 60% and the U.S. troops have increased to fill the gap. In Basra, 1,300 Iraqi soldiers and policemen deserted or refused to fight against Moktada al-Sadr’s popular and well-armed Mahdi Army. Our goal was to train 350,000 Iraqi security forces. We reached that goal in June of last year, yet today we have more American troops on the ground in Iraq than we did two years ago.
The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates more than 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes. Of these, 2.7 million have been internally displaced, and more than 2 million have fled for neighboring states. For the past two weeks, the U.S. military has been actively cordoning off sections of Sadr City, home to 2.5 million Iraqis. Residents interviewed said the U.S. barriers were creating city-like prisons.
Unemployment is as high as 50% in certain areas, and electricity production remains widely unreliable. Baghdad receives less than 9 hours of electricity per day, and just seven of the 18 provinces receive more than 12 hours per day.
Oil production remains below pre-war levels, while world crude oil prices have climbed to over $100 per barrel. Congressman Murtha said, “Before the invasion you remember the Administration said that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. American taxpayers have spent approximately $47 billion on Iraqi reconstruction while Iraqi oil revenues are expected to now reach $70 billion in 2008. Because there are no reliable figures, we don’t know how much the Iraqis have spent on reconstruction, but we do know that American taxpayers are picking up most of the tab.”
Murtha continued, “We’re going to change that in this next war supplemental spending bill, if the United States has a $410 billion budget deficit, why should we be paying out of our pocket to rebuild a country with a significant budget surplus?” He described the President’s war as being funded on credit and every day American taxpayers borrow $343 million to pay for the war in Iraq.
Murtha is concerned that the U.S. military is distracted by Iraq, and that the reputation of the United States worldwide is falling dramatically. When questioned by a reporter about what he would put in his appropriations as recommendations, Murtha gave the following list:
(1) Recommend a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq;
(2) No torture – Torture did more to hurt U.S. reputation than anything;
(3) Cost would support fully equipping and fully training U.S. forces.
Murtha hopes to have a supplemental that looks beyond Iraq. “We’ve spent so many resources and so much attention on Iraq that we’ve lost sight of what’s to come down the road. We need a national strategy to identify both near-term and long-term threats to this country. Look what’s happening around us because of Iraq – a faltering economy, skyrocketing energy prices, rising food costs, a significantly weaker dollar, and a considerable rise in influence of both Russia and China.”
“The country needs a national security strategy, one that focuses our attention on the future. This must be our mission, and this is something that our nation’s next President and Congress must accomplish,” said Murtha.
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