Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice As Prepared Listen to Senator Feingold's Statement Watch (Quicktime) Senator Feingold's Statement January 11, 2007 Thank you, Madam Secretary, for appearing before the committee today. Unfortunately, Madam Secretary, this hearing is taking place in the context of what has become a true nightmare for the United States and quite possibly the greatest foreign policy blunder in the history of our nation. We currently have 140,000 of our bravest men and women in uniform in Iraq stuck in what has become a civil war. Over 3,000 Americans have died. And yet we continue to see increases in inter-ethnic attacks, in bombings, in the strength of Shia militias, in the strength of the insurgency, in displaced persons and so on. Almost four years after this war began, Iraqis are no closer to a political agreement or to resolving the underlying political, ethnic, religious, and economic problems that are ripping the country apart. But the President wants to send more U.S. troops to Iraq. His strategy runs counter to the needs of our strained military, counter to the testimony of our military’s most senior officers, counter to the need to address troubling developments in places like Afghanistan and Somalia, and counter to the fact that after four years of failed “strategies for victory” the American people have sent a resounding message – it is time to redeploy our brave troops out of Iraq. The American people soundly rejected the President’s Iraq policy in November. They sent a clear message that maintaining our troops in Iraq is not in the interest of our national security. They understand that our Iraq-centric policies are hurting our ability to defeat the enemy that attacked us on 9/11. We can’t afford to continue this course. I have consistently called for the redeployment of our military from Iraq, but now Congress must use its main power - the power of the purse - to put an end to our involvement in this disastrous war. Over the next several weeks, I – and I hope the rest of my colleagues - will take a hard look at just how we should do that. Our troops in Iraq have performed heroically. But we cannot continue to send our nation’s best into a war that was started – and is still maintained -- on false pretenses. An indefinite presence of U.S. military personnel in Iraq will not fix that country’s political problems. And sending more troops to Iraq will not provide the stability that can only come from a political agreement. From the beginning, this war has been a mistake, and the policies that have carried it out have been a failure. We need a new national security strategy that starts with a redeployment from Iraq so we can repair and strengthen our military and focus on the global threats to our national security.

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