February 7, 2005

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech about Iraq Trip
Atlanta Rotary Club

Thank you for that kind introduction, and you’ve got two great guys in Archie and Tom joining your organization, and I wish I could take the time I have to call out so many of you in this room that I know personally and have been so wonderful to me and my career, but if I did so I wouldn’t have time to say a word.

You know they say the most dangerous person of the world is a member of the United States Congress just home from a three-day fact-finding trip. Well you’ve got one. In the last three days, I have found out something very interesting. There are two Iraq’s in the world. One, the one I saw, and the other one Christiane Amanpour and Peter Jennings talk about.There are some stories that I’d like to tell today that I’d really like to share with you. That I hope will bring a balance to what you see and what you hear and what we as Americans are doing in that part of the word and about what is happening in that part of the world.

And I preface my remarks by asking everybody to picture the State of the Union Address when Janet Norwood hugged Safia from behind in the gallery of the United States House. If you thought that was staged for political theater, I saw it happen 36 hours ago to three worn, tired out United States Senators in many places in Baghdad. The people of Iraq are grateful for what the people of the United States of America and our armed forces and our coalition forces are giving them the opportunity to do.

And there are some facts you need to know. You know if you didn’t pay close attention, you’d think we were the only people in Iraq and the only people fighting the terrorists. Well, you tell that to the Ukrainian soldier whose hand I held in Landstrul Medical Center in Germany yesterday afternoon by the side of his father, where he, near Mosul, and three other Ukrainians fighting for peace and liberty and freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people, took a direct hit. Or you tell it to the Italian soldiers who provided us security at Camp Victory after we landed on our way to Baghdad and the Green Zone.

And you might pick out and say ‘yeah, but Germany’s not helping,’ and if you listened and read, you may say ‘yeah Germany’s not helping.’ Wrong. Politically they didn’t send troops because they had an election based on that and the winner said, ‘I’m not going to send troops.’ So everybody thinks we’re getting no help at all. But you should know that in the last two years, they’ve paid almost $70 million in landing fees for United States troops, men, materials and warships to Rammestein and in Frankfurt and reposition into Iraq. They are helping us in the training of the Iraqi Security Force, and they’re providing immeasurable help to our county. It is truly a unified coalition of freedom-loving people that are fighting to win a great war against what is the ultimate evil. We are not at war with the people of Iraq; we are at war with terrorists.

The people we fight in Iraq today are terrorists, and I would submit to you that post 9/11, had America decided not to engage, had America decided to preempt, had America decided not to stand up for all that we love, those fights would be in Boston and Atlanta and New York, not in Baghdad, Kabul and Afghanistan. We have made some mistakes, sure. There are some things we wish might not have happened – Abu Ghrahib and the actions of a few, but it’s a shame you never see the harsh brutality and unbelievable and I mean unspeakable acts that the terrorists are perpetrating as we speak today, against the Iraqi people who are fighting for their freedom.

We’re at war against the ultimate evil in the world, and we’re going to win. And with that win, not only will the people of Iraq become free, but we’ll be a safer county and the world will be a better place to live.

If you watch television, you would think the Iraqi military militia and police were a ragtag bunch of folks that weren’t prepared or capable. Well let me tell you what you weren’t told about the Election Day Sunday a week ago. There were 5,200 polling places where 8 million or more Iraqis voted. All the primary security and all the secondary security was carried out by the Iraqi police, the Iraqi military and the Iraqi militia. The coalition forces were accessible and available but were not visible and present.

We’ve heard stories that they’ve cut and run. Well let me tell you about the three Iraqi policemen last Sunday, who threw their bodies on suicide bombers and saved Iraqis waiting to vote. There were 48 deaths on Election Day, but a lot of them were terrorists. In fact, 200 were killed or captured that day – and they’re getting more every day and the Iraqi police and militia are getting better.

Because the joy that you saw when Janet Norwood, the bereaved mother of United States Marine Byron Norwood, hugged Safia was real. I saw people in Iraq – who they didn’t know they were going to see me and I didn’t know I was going to see them, who aren’t washing their index finger so they can show you with pride that they voted – understanding the fact that the terrorists are telling them that if they see a purple finger that they’re going to kill them.

So I come to you today to tell you that everything you see about Baghdad and Iraq is not really what’s going on. Yes, it’s a dangerous place. No, it’s not over. Yes, we don’t have a timetable to get out, and if we did we wouldn’t tell the terrorists by announcing it on television. But the fact of the matter is great things are happening.

Now what about the prospects of these people embracing democracy? I’ve got to tell you the greatest story, the greatest political experience I have ever had. We had two private meetings. One with Barham Salih , who is the Deputy Prime Minister and a Kurd, the minority party in Iraq. Subsequent to that, we had a meeting with a man whose first name I cannot pronounce, but his last name was al-Rubai , a Shiite who will be on the 250-odd member governing council – that’s already a known conclusion based on a preliminary vote. The Shiite’s – we obviously don’t know what the number’s gonna be, but they’re gonna be a big number – then you got the Kurds and the Sunnis. And so we asked the question to Mr. Salih , about well ‘how are y’all gonna deal with this, because you’ve got some news reports where they’re saying this can’t possibly work because they can’t get along and they’ll never get together.’

So we asked Mr. Salih – we said ‘now the Kurds are a small minority and you’re gonna have a significant Shiite majority. How are you going to deal with that?’ His answer was, ‘filibuster.’ That’s no lie. Now I cringed at that statement, but he said ‘we are studying Jefferson and America, and in America, the majority cannot run over the minority because of the filibuster.’ So then, in a separate meeting, we met with the Shiite, who is going to be in the majority; it’s just a matter of how much. And we asked him about the concern of pulling this all together to write a constitution. And his answer was ‘two-thirds, and if it takes two-thirds of the Congress to ratify a constitutional amendment, it’s good enough for taking two-thirds of Iraqis to develop a constitution.

Now let me tell you something – I don’t know if you’ve seen that on TV – I certainly haven’t, but that is the level of intellectual engagement that already exists among those people that will be going together and doing what 226 years ago Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin did. And we went into a room, and they quoted those founding fathers of our country. When we asked them about the concerns that we hear expressed today about why they can’t do something. I have come back from this trip a stronger believer than I was that not only is it possible; it’s going to happen. It’s not going to be pretty; there will be mistakes; there will be difficulties. We certainly had them after our revolution. But terrorism is on the run in the Middle East, and the world is a better place.

You know a couple of the sidelights I’d like to tell you. We went into Iraq through Jordan and landed in Amman. You see what Secretary Rice in the Middle East today, yesterday with new President Abbas and the promises of the Palestinian and the Israelis coming together – peace probably closer at hand than it’s been in decades. A remarkable thing is happening around the world – and it’s not all because of the United States of America – but had we not taken the actions we have instigated and had we not in our history gone to liberate oppressed people, then it probably wouldn’t have.

My favorite quote of the trip not in Baghdad was in Germany, when with some Germans in Heidelberg, the conversation turned to ‘how do the people feel about Americans?’ This German man at the end of the table said the following, he said ‘we don’t have America to thank for any thing. We have America to thank for everything.’ And I thought that was a powerful statement. Yes, there are detractors. Yes, there are those that wish that some things wouldn’t happen. But by and large the world understands what the men and women fighting in harm’s way for you and for me are fighting for freedom and liberty around the world.

Now lastly, before I open to questions, I hope you take time to say a prayer every night for the young men and women who are fighting in Iraq. Now one of the things that Senator Inhofe and Senator Thune and I asked to do – I asked to eat with Georgia troops and Senator Inhofe asked to eat with Oklahoma troops and Senator Thune asked to eat with South Dakota troops. One of our jokes was, ‘well there sure won’t be any people there from South Dakota.’ Well there were more people from South Dakota than anywhere. I guess everybody’s left South Dakota and gone to Baghdad. That’s why they only have one Congressman – that’s what I told Thune.

But we had lunch at Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport, and I ate with troops from Homerville, Georgia from Kennesaw, Georgia from Statesboro, Georgia from Hahira – from those of you near Jimmy Carter’s home town of Plains, from the suburb of Plains known as Ellaville. Black Georgians, white Georgians, male Georgians, female Georgians and almost all of them between the ages of 18 and 25 with some exceptions – and their officers were no where to be found, there was no press, they were under no scrutiny, because this was in Camp Victory which is highly secured. And I said, ‘is there anything that I can do for you?’ And all they wanted to say is, ‘when you go home, tell people about what we’re really doing.’ You see, they get CNN and all that stuff over there in the USO areas the have set up, and they see what’s being said on television – yet they know what’s happening. So say a prayer for them.

And the second thing I’d like to tell you is – do they have problems, yeah, they have problems, sure. But we know our military is stretched. And we know our guardsmen and reservists are stretched. And I made a particular point of talking to a lot of guardsmen and a lot of reservists who are a substantial part of our force. And some of those units are getting stretched. But they are resilient, and they are positive, and some of the things the Department of Defense has been doing have been a significant help in reenlistment. In fact, of all the people I talked to on active duty, everybody was re-upping but one, and that was a gentleman who drove me home from Andrews last night who is a single father with two teenage girls, and that was his reason. He just couldn’t take the time to go to overseas stations. That was the only person and the only reason that I heard. The guardsmen and reservists, yes there’s some pressure, and yes, we need to do a good job in the Congress of making sure we address and equalize wherever there’s inequity – every treatment and every opportunity they get. But they are a proud, fighting force. Proud of the country they represent and proud of the job that they are doing.

Lastly, the last thing we did on the trip was go to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Rammestein, Germany to meet the wounded soldiers, which was a very meaningful experience and not the first time I had done it, but it was the first time I had done it so close to the theater of operation. And I just have to tell you what the head nurse said. She said to me when I walked into the Intensive Care Unit where none of them could speak – although two of them were totally conscious, but because of being ventilated, they couldn’t communicate. Let me tell you what the nurse who met us at the door said to take us in to see the troops, who had been asked if they wanted to see us and everybody wanted it. And we went in the room and we held their hands. And I said to the nurse, ‘thank you for what you’re doing.’ And the nurse, Heath, said ‘this is the greatest honor I have ever had in my life.’ That’s the spirit the American soldiers, the American military and the American people – civilian and military – serving in the theater of operation feel.

Now I want to always be sure that I am getting the good news and the bad news when it comes to our country and everything that’s going on. We need to know it all so we make the right judgement. I’m just glad you gave me the opportunity to come to a great Rotary Club, in front of so many great Georgians, and tell you some of the good news about your country – about your sons and daughters, and about democracy spreading and growing in Iraq. And if I’ve done anything today, hopefully I’ve given you a chance when you say a prayer tonight to give the thanks I’ve given for living in the greatest country on the face of this earth, the United States of America.

Thank you.