Today Congressman David Scott (D-GA) spoke on the House Floor twice in support of the Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act. His remarks appear below:
“Mr. Speaker, I stand 100 percent behind this bill for a responsible redeployment of our troops out of Iraq. Much has been said. There are several points I would like to make going forward.
“First of all, this is responsible. This is not something that was just put together. This was put together with military advisers of the first order, generals on the ground who were consulted, and by two of the most distinguished individuals in this Chamber, our distinguished chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Tom Lantos, and our distinguished chairman of our Armed Services Committee, Mr. Ike Skelton. Nobody can argue their credentials. Nobody can argue the credentials of the military advisers that put this together.
“But most importantly, the people that no one has mentioned, the entity that no one has mentioned, the most important entity of all is the American people. This bill represents the will of the American people. Seventy percent of the American people support this action today.
“Now, let me remind you of the words of Robert Jackson, one of our distinguished Supreme Court Justices in the steel seizure case of 1952, when a similar situation was in place, where we were at loggerheads then with the executive branch and the legislative branch, but at that point, the Supreme Court decided that Congress has the authority. And Jackson went on to say that when the executive branch denies, disrespects and disavows the authority of Congress, we enter into what is referred to as a zone of twilight, or a twilight zone.
“That's where we are now, to get out of this twilight zone of destruction and mayhem, of instability in the Middle East. You talk about stability in the Middle East. We are more unstable in the Middle East now as a result of what we have done.
“Get us out of this twilight zone. This bill is the way to do it, and I commend it and hope we pass it overwhelmingly.”
Scott added, "Mr. Speaker, let me just very briefly outline exactly what we are after in this bill.
"First of all, this is a responsible effort for redeployment so that we can refocus and fight the war on terror. The situation in Iraq is a civil war compounded by civil wars that have been going on ever since Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael, Esau, Mohammed and his son-in-law, which has broken into the Shi'as and the Sunnis; hundreds of thousands of years, folks.
"None of the people from Iraq came to this country and asked, please come over and pump in $500 billion, 3,600 of the lives of your precious sons and daughters to make a democracy for us. That was a decision that was made counter to the authorization in the first place. It was a go against weapons of mass destruction.
"It is responsible. It is focused. We need to do it, and I urge passage of this bill."
