Senator Robert C. Byrd

Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd-February 12, 2003

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11.

Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher.

This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some .6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.

Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace?

And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reins of power after Saddam Hussein?

Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq?

Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a world-wide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income?

In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.

Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd-February 26, 2003

Since last August, the Administration has worked aggressively to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who directly threatens the United States. The President has been unambiguous, and often dangerously blunt, about his passion to use force to destroy Saddam's regime.

The Bush Administration has promoted a vision of Saddam's removal from power quickly, easily, and bloodlessly. Indeed, part of the rationale for support for this war is that America's tremendous military superiority over Iraq will confine a military conflict to a relatively painless contest between the United States' awesome military forces and the relatively weak, conventional military machine of Saddam Hussein.

A swift and simple military victory certainly is one possibility, but in our democratic-Republic the Administration also has a responsibility to inform the American people that much less pleasant scenarios are also possible and even likely. The Congress has a responsibility to explore all possible scenarios with an eye to the eventual costs of this war. We must not just accept the rosy projections so far offered by the Administration. Frankly, I have seen little effort by either the Administration or the Congress to inform the taxpayer about the likely costs of this war.

In both dollars and human lives, the Administration has been ominously quiet about its internal calculations and estimates. What is even worse is that the Congress has barely bothered to ask about them.

Earlier this month, the President unveiled his budget for the Fiscal Year 2004. Even assuming the most primitive and loose definition of the term "fiscal responsibility," that budget request should certainly have included some rough cost estimate for a war with Iraq. Even a range of costs would have been somewhat illuminating.

But no cost estimate was included in the President's budget. Let me repeat that. There is no estimate of the cost of the looming war with Iraq in the President's budget. The possible war has dominated the airwaves for months, yet there is no cost estimate in the President's budget. President Bush mentions the looming conflict in nearly every public pronouncement, yet no cost estimate to fight this war appears in his '04 budget. Is the Administration trying to tell the people of this nation it is for free?

When the Defense Secretary presented the President's defense budget to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and was asked what the Administration projected that a war in Iraq would cost, he would only say that such costs are "not knowable." Let us contemplate that answer "not knowable." Does the Secretary of Defense mean to say that this great nation does not yet know what its plans include for a war with Iraq? Is that why the costs are "not knowable?" Does he mean to say that we do not yet know exactly what we are going to try to achieve in Iraq? Is that why the costs are "not knowable?" Or does he simply mean to indicate that he does not want to divulge the potential costs, therefore to us they are "not knowable."

One must presume that by now the Administration would have made several internal forecasts of the military cost of the war using various scenarios, and that the White House Council of Economic Advisors would have prepared for the President a classified study of the projected economic impact of the war. Reportedly OMB Director Daniels has been working on war estimates for months, yet we are told that these costs are "not knowable." None of this information has been made available to the public, nor, I suspect, is it likely to be released in the near future. Congress has a responsibility to demand that information. Congress must not accept the answer, "not knowable." The American people deserve to know the truth.

There was one cost estimate provided by the Administration which came from an interview last fall with Larry Lindsey, the President's former economic advisor, who said that a war with Iraq could cost between billion and billion. He went on to opine that that was "nothing."

Yet, the White House quickly distanced itself from that comment, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget rebuked that estimate, saying that Lindsey's estimate was "very, very high."

The OMB Director suggested that the cost of the war would be closer to billion or billion. The Pentagon recently stretched that estimate to billion. I wonder just what we are to make of these conflicting estimates. How are we to gauge the validity of such widely varying numbers. Do these figures contemplate other complications?

What if casualty estimates grow into the thousands? What if oil prices skyrocket, sparking inflation and lines at the gas pump, and costing the U.S. economy thousands of American jobs? Suppose the Middle East erupts in a tornado of violence, toppling regime after regime in the region?

Even a rudimentary list of the possible contingencies shows that costs may grossly exceed what the Administration wants the public to believe.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last September that the incremental costs of just deploying a force to the Persian Gulf -- that is, those costs incurred above those budgeted for routine operations -- could be between billion and billion. Prosecuting a war, according to the CBO, could cost between billion and billion per month. And after hostilities ended, the costs just to return U.S. forces to their home bases could range between billion and billion.

Regardless of the swiftness of a military victory, there remains the cost of a post-war occupation of Iraq, which the Administration says could last for up to two years and could mean another $1 billion to billion or more per month during that period. On top of that, the United States might face a humanitarian crisis including rampant disease and starvation if Saddam Hussein employs a scorched earth strategy in defending his regime. What about the need for a cleanup of biological and chemical weapons if the Iraqi Republican Guard employs them against U.S. soldiers?

Reconstruction and nation-building costs resulting from installing a democratic government in Iraq have to also be thought about. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences projected that the minimum reconstruction and nation-building costs for Iraq could be as high as billion, and that's under the very best of circumstances. Will the Administration propose something similar to a Marshall Plan for Iraq? The Academy reported that U.S. investments in Western Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan cost a total of .3 billion over a four-year period. That is the equivalent of billion over four years if measured as a percentage of GDP in 2002.

No one likes to talk about putting a price tag on national security, but these costs simply cannot be ignored in light of our current sagging economy and given a projected budget deficit of billion for the fiscal year 2004. Remember, this government is going to have to borrow the money to finance this war. The total price of a war in Iraq could easily add up to hundreds of billions of dollars - - even a trillion or more - - overwhelming a federal budget which is already sliding into deep deficits and warping the U.S. economy and impacting the economies of other nations for years to come.

And unlike the Gulf War in 1991, many of our allies are unlikely to want to help much in defraying these costs. Right now, the Administration is trying to coax nations to join the "coalition of the willing" by paying them, not by asking them to help us pay for the war. "Coalition of the willing" or "COW" for short. It appears to me that the U.S. is the "cow" - - the cash cow in this case. We are the ones being milked.

The Administration reportedly has negotiated a multi-billion package of grants and loans for the Republic of Turkey for use of its bases to open a possible northern front against Iraq. The Administration is negotiating similar multi-billion packages with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and other allies in the Middle East. I wonder if members are aware of the details of any of these deals in the works or their projected costs over time?

I believe that the costs of this war will be staggering. We know that our nation's most precious treasure, the lives of our young men and women in uniform, will certainly be threatened. But we do not know how great the risk is because the Administration will not talk about its plans. In addition, the cost, in terms of taxpayer dollars, will be enormous. We hear of negotiations ongoing with Turkey that are in the area of billion. We learn of requests from Israel for billion. In addition, Jordan wants to be compensated. We read that negotiations are underway to provide economic assistance to Mexico, Chile, and various African nations -- all of which are members of the United Nations Security Council.

Where will this all end? How many nations will be promised American economic assistance just for their tacit support? And how strong is support that can be bought with promises of American dollars?

This is no way to operate. If the case against Saddam Hussein were strong enough on its merits, the United States would not have to buy the support of the international community. If the world truly believes that Saddam Hussein poses an imminent threat, then let the world say so clearly. But do not taint that decision, do not taint the possible sacrifice of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, by prying open the door to war with a blank check from the taxpayers.

If war is undertaken without UN sanction or broad international support, the United States taxpayer can expect to pay the costs of the war for decades and pay the interest costs for decades more.

And that's to say nothing about the larger macroeconomic costs to the economy. The economic ripples of a war could spread beyond direct budgetary costs into international energy markets through higher oil prices. The psychological effects of a war in Iraq, especially if it initiates new terrorist attacks around the globe, could further scare the already jittery financial markets and rattle consumers.

If the war goes badly, either through heavier than expected causalities, protracted bloody urban warfare, massive foreign denunciations, chemical and biological warfare, or major terrorist attacks here and abroad, we may be plunging our economy into unfathomable debt which this nation cannot easily sustain.

But even if one discounts these scenarios as unlikely, and sets them all aside, the potential costs of a limited war in Iraq could continue to pile up for years, depending on the total damage to Iraq, the civilian casualties, and the possibility that the war's effects could spread into other countries.

This is a dangerous and damaging game the Administration is playing with the American public. Glossing over the cost of a war with Iraq may make it easier to win short-term support. But without any serious attention to costs, the American people cannot be engaged in a fulsome public discussion about the eventual wisdom of undertaking this war. Public support cannot be sustained to accomplish our post-war goals in Iraq if the nation has been misled about the duration and difficulty of such a conflict. We cannot treat the citizens of this nation as if they are children who must be fed a fairy tale about fighting a glorious war of "liberation" which will be cheap, short and bloodless. If the President is going to force this nation to engage in this unwise, potentially disastrous, and alarmingly expensive commitment, he must lay out all of the costs and risks to the nation.

What is particularly worrisome is how naively the idea of establishing a perfect democracy in Iraq is being tossed around by this Administration. If the Administration engages in such a massive undertaking without the American people understanding the real costs and long-term commitment that will be required to achieve this bucolic vision, our efforts in Iraq could end with chaos in the region. Chaos, poverty, hopelessness, hatred - - that's exactly the kind of environment that becomes a fertile breeding ground for terrorists.

The Administration is asking the American public and the international community to support this war. The Administration must also put all of its cards on the table. A list of real risks and downsides do the nation no good locked in Donald Rumsfeld's desk drawer. They must be brought into the sunshine for the people to assess.

The American people are willing to embrace a cause when they judge it to be noble and both its risks and its benefits are explained honestly to them. But if information is withheld, long-term political support can never be sustained. Once the order is given and the bombs start falling, the lives of American troops and innocent civilians on the ground hang in the balance. Once "boots are on the ground," concerns about the monetary cost of war necessarily take a back seat. This nation will not shortchange the safety of our fighting men and women once they are in harms way.

But our people and this Congress should not have to wait until our troops are sent to fight to know what we are facing, including the painful costs of this war in dollars, political turmoil, and blood.

In a democratic-Republic, secrecy has no place. Hiding information from the public to rally support behind a war, at the very time when the government should be striving for maximum trust will eventually undermine our nation's strength. This conflict will be paid for with the people's treasure and the people's blood. This is no time to affront that sacrifice with beltway spin and secrecy.

Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd-March 19, 2003

I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.

But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, Al Qaeda, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.

The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.

But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. If we attack Saddam Hussein, we will probably drive him from power. But, the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.

The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?

War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.