Biden, Joseph: National Guard or in the U.S. military is talking about. It is the issue. And The United States Senate is being silenced on it, even prevented from debating whether we can talk about making a simple
Biden, Joseph: It is the issue. It is the issue everybody is discussing at the kitchen table. It is the issue every man, woman, and husband and wife, mother, and father with someone in the
Biden, Joseph: statement that: Mr. President, you are wrong; don't escalate this war.
Biden, Joseph: The truth is, our voices, quite frankly, are as important as our votes here. The President will find, if we have a full-blown debate on the floor of the Senate, there's precious few people on this
Biden, Joseph: floor who think he is handling this war correctly. Instead of escalating the war, we should be drawing down our forces. I predict the American people hear, as I said, very few of our colleagues
Biden, Joseph: talking about what a good idea this is, what the President has in mind. And so to echo the comments made by my colleague from New York, if, in fact, we are precluded from even debating the issue of
Biden, Joseph: whether or not we oppose the President's escalation of the war, surely you are going to see more coming to the floor.
Biden, Joseph: I have been working with the Senator from Massachusetts and others on a piece of legislation that would literally rescind the President's authority--the authority we gave him to go to war in the
Biden, Joseph: first place--and redefine the mission very narrowly.
Biden, Joseph: Look, there is going to be a lot of discussion, whether we debate today or not, and debate this week on Iraq. There is going to be a lot of discussion about what to do next. It will range all the way
Biden, Joseph: from cutting off funding, to capping troops, to a number of other proposals. And The truth is, we are being presented with a false choice up to now. We are either told we have to stay the course and
Biden, Joseph: escalate the war or the other choice is to bring our troops home and hope for the best.
Biden, Joseph: Well, the truth of the matter is that none of this will matter. We are going to have to bring everybody home if they don't get a political solution in Iraq. There is only one: a federal system.
Biden, Joseph: Listen to what their Constitution says. Even the National Intelligence Estimate, the estimate of all the intelligence agencies, says--and I am paraphrasing it now--the Sunnis have to accept
Biden, Joseph: regionalism and the Kurds and Shias have to give the Sunnis a bigger piece of the action in order for them to do that.
Biden, Joseph: I point out to everybody, when civil wars begin in other countries, there are only a few things that stop them: One side wins and there is carnage; two, an occupying force stays there indefinitely;
Biden, Joseph: or, three, you end up in a situation where they have a federal state.
Biden, Joseph: The President should get about the business of pursuing not a military solution here but a political solution. He should be calling an international conference, getting all the parties in a room, as
Biden, Joseph: we did in Dayton, convincing our allies and the region that the only outcome that has any possibility of surviving is the federal state, like their Constitution calls for.
Biden, Joseph: I ask permission to put the rest of my statement in the record.
Biden, Joseph: I conclude by saying that the American people expect--quite frankly, I think they demand--that we start to intelligently debate this subject rather than doing it by way of talk shows and Sunday
Biden, Joseph: appearances on TV. We should be debating on this floor.
Biden, Joseph: I yield the floor.