December 13, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech about Iraq
East Cobb Area Council Breakfast of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce

Regardless of your disposition or your position with regards to the conflict in Iraq. This is a time we need to deal with real facts. And not with opinions, and not with rushes to judgment. America has made a significant commitment of our men’s and women’s lives, as well as, your money, in order, to help the promise of democracy and freedom come about in a part of the world that has known little of either. While at the same time continuing to fight the war on terror. And as the chapters in Iraq unfold they’ll only be a few chapters in a much bigger book, which is the book in the ongoing war on terror.

A lot of people have forgotten a lot of things, or at least, a lot of people aren’t putting a lot of things in perspective. This morning I’d like to share my thoughts based on what I know. Now, I’ve read this thing. In fact, my job for the last two years is to preside over the U.S. Senate on Fridays. Which, Steve, is kind of like going to a poorly attended funeral because Senators don’t work much on Fridays. Now, we worked until 2 a.m. Saturday morning last Friday, but they don’t get up very much, Rob, in the morning. So, when you preside over the Senate on Friday mornings you don’t hear a lot of speeches, nor, is there a lot going on, but the rules and the law you have to keep it open. So, I was able to read this on Friday morning. And counted only 130 pages and Rob, it has got a lot of pictures and maps and charts and things like that.

But let me give you a perspective for a few minutes and I want to give you this perspective based on the story of two men. Some of you may know them, but I doubt it. One of them is a guy named Noah Harris and the other is a guy named Hunter Hill. Now, Hunter Hill I took to lunch on Monday. Hunter Hill is the youngest son of one of my fraternity brothers and I went to college with Alex Hill. Hunter is thirty years old. Hunter is working for Carter and Company. Hunter, if you remember when we went into Afghanistan right after 9/11, you saw that night drop. When we dropped all of those guys into Afghanistan to go after the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Well, Hunter was in that group. And he was a Captain in the Army and he spent four years in the Army, fought in Iraq. And Hunter got his honorable discharge. He went into the ready reserve and then went into the retired reserve, that’s not the right word for it, but it’s the last guys you’re going to call.

Well, the reason I took Hunter to lunch on Monday is because Hunter is going back to Iraq; he got the call to go back. And the reason I’m taking him is because he called me and to tell me how excited he was. He was excited that he was going back to Iraq. And I said, Hunter get your Dad on the phone, lets find a date, I want to take you to lunch before you leave in January. So, we had lunch at the Georgian Club on Monday and I talked to Hunter. And I listened to Hunter talk about his experience in Afghanistan and later Iraq, and now, his hopes for his visit going back to Iraq. And during the whole time, this is a thirty year old guy, with his dad, he’s making a living, he’s been called back, he’s already been over there once.

Now, you would think based on what you see a lot on TV and what you hear reported that he’d be fighting and disappointed and mad and all this kind of stuff. He’s excited because he feels that so much has been accomplished that he would like to be a part of seeing to it that we continue to be able to liberate those people. And it was a real inspiration to me to listen to a guy who’s been there and is going back, say that, and talk about the thing he saw first hand on the ground against the Taliban. What they were doing to women, children, and what they had done to that country. And the joy he had in being a part of running them out. Now, they are trying to make a come back and I want to talk about that for a second. But how important it was to liberate those people and how wonderful it was to see the Afghani people embrace the American soldiers who ran these guys off.

Now, the second guy I want to preface my remarks with is Noah Harris. And Noah is not with us anymore. He died in Iraq. I never met him personally, but he became an e-mail pal with me. I want to tell you about Noah, he’s a great story. Steve, this is an inspiration. He was a cheerleader for the University of Georgia in 2001. When 9/11 hit, he made up his mind that he wanted to do something. So, he went and got in ROTC. He was already a junior, but he got a waiver to go into ROTC and in his last four quarters at the University of Georgia he got an ROTC commission and went into the Army. And a year after his graduation which was 2003 he was on the ground in Iraq. Now, here’s a guy that was a cheerleader for the University of Georgia, saw what happened on 9/11, said I want to do something, went into ROTC, he got his commission, went straight within a year of graduating from college to Iraq and fought.

He got a nickname, the Beanie Baby Solider; actually, it was the Beanie Baby Lieutenant because he was a second lieutenant. Soldiers were allowed to take a certain amount of personal weight; I forget how many pounds it is. All his personal belongings, he ended up taking Beanie Babies and he had two pouches in his field jacket. One pouch, he put the ammunition to reload his ammunition, the other pouch, he’d put Beanie Babies. And as he would patrol in Bagdad, he would give Beanie Babies to the Iraqi kids once they’d secured and cleared an area out. Now, he was shot by a sniper in Bagdad and died. I never met him, but I got an e-mail the day before he was killed. I still have that e-mail a home; I still have all the e-mails. He talked about the progress that we as a country were making against some awfully bad people.

And I tell you abut these two guys to preface my remarks by saying, we should not forget that a lot of people just like you and I have sacrificed, some of them their lives, on behalf of what we have attempted to do in the Middle East. Now, some of the people who commented today in light of our difficulties only mention that in terms of quantifying the number who have lost their life. They never mentioned that those people who lost their life are volunteers who went to fight for a cause that they believed in and that their country believed in.

We have made some mistakes and I want to talk about a couple of those. But the biggest mistake of the United States of America would be to forget how we got into all of this in the first place because if we do we will be taken advantage of again. And the world will be more vulnerable. It was not a mistake to confront terrorists, and it was not a mistake to assume that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The entire United Nations thought he did. All of his generals though he did. A lot of people forget that our confrontation with Saddam Hussein was to enforce a resolution the U.N. passed and then wouldn’t enforce. I find it very unfortunate that Kofi Annan would question the United States of America’s abandonment; questioning us by saying that we had abandoned our commitment to the basic tenants of this country, when in fact; the number one requirement of the Constitution of the United States of America is to protect our people and the domestic tranquility. And I don’t know about you but 9/11 was the biggest threat to domestic tranquility and security of our people ever. And I don’t think we’ve abandoned any tenant or any principle of this country. In fact, I think our country has responded and handled itself under very difficult circumstances in some pretty unbelievable ways.

But anyway back to the subject, the mistakes that we made are the judgment mistakes that sometimes you make in warfare. We made a serious mistake when we went into Iraq, we didn’t secure the border with Syria and the border with Iran. When we look back, there was no way to assume it would happen, but in the military you always make these judgments about what might happen. Those have been conduits for the insurgents that kept coming to Iraq and have during the entire confrontation. It would have been great if we would have secured those, but we didn’t secure those. So, was that a mistake? Sure, it was a mistake. But does that mean we’re wrong for doing what we’re doing? No, it means it was a mistake that we learned from and if you read the Iraq study group report, they talk about some of the things that we should do to correct some of the things that we didn’t do that were judgmental, but certainly not mistakes that were made intentionally or overlooked.

But we have not made a mistake to defend peace and liberty. Tom and I, as members of the House and the Senate, have the responsibility to defend this country and to protect the domestic tranquility and make the decisions that it takes to constitute that. Now, the elections of November 2 nd were instructive, I mean there is no question that the people went out to the polls and voted because they were frustrated with the battle in Iraq and its protracted nature. There were some who talked about a total withdraw, but quite frankly most didn’t. Most argued about what we were doing, but they didn’t have a recommendation as to what we should do. And since the election those who were critical haven’t had much of a recommendation, except for Dennis Kucinich, about what we should do because it is a very difficult situation.

Everybody knows that the frustration of the American people is what the protractive nature and the loss of life, but not necessarily with the fact that we took on terrorists and that we fight for democracy and liberty and freedom. They want what we all want and that’s better results in a quicker time table. So, I say all that to say this, I don’t know what the president is going to say in January. I will tell you this, the President has had meetings with small groups for the last month and I was privileged to be one of them. Where he sat down and said, tell me what you would do. And he sat there and was taking notes. I mean, the guy is really trying to get everybody around the table and get all of their suggestions and take this study, and also, take the fact that we can’t abandon our constitutional responsibility and try to come up with a recommendation. In the end, I don’t mind telling you what my suggestions have been, my suggestion have been that the very worst thing to do is declare that we can’t succeed and just come home. That’s all that the terrorists need. They don’t need to beat us they just need us to quit. The Iraqis don’t need us to quit. The world doesn’t need us to quit.

But we do have to benchmark the Iraqi performance itself. The Iraqi military must begin to assume responsibility for their own security. And as they do that relinquishes the number of troops that we need to provide. I will tell you now most all the conflict and most all of the combat that is initiated now are Iraqi troops supported by the U.S. The U.S. is pretty much the supply line and the logistics line for the Iraqi army. The man power for the conflict, right now, is more often than not Iraqi soldiers, but there needs to be more of them. And they need to take over more of the command responsibilities. And we’re going to need to have embedded U.S. military personnel with those soldiers for a significant period of time to continue to provide them with the logistics and infrastructure that they just don’t have and haven’t had to continue to secure their country. The President has already told Al-Malaki that that’s one of the requirements that he’s going to lay forward. As Al-Malaki and his government begin to embrace that realization, and we as a country continue to provide them with support then we can see a reduction of U.S. manpower, an increase of Iraqi defense of itself, and we can see a period of time, over time, in which the commitment of manpower and men there a significantly less. But it has got to be tied to actual situations on the ground and it has got to be tied to the Iraqi army’s assumption of military and security operations.

Now, the second thing I want to talk about with regard to Iraq is one of the recommendations and I don’t remember it’s number and I don’t have my glasses on, but it’s on page 51, and I really do encourage you to get the book because one of the interesting things about this report is that it basically calls on a direct engagement with Iran and Syria to be a part of the overall solution. It also calls on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement be a part of the overall situation. I think it’s the 34 th chapter of the 2 nd book of Old Testament’s Chronicles, right? I wanted to see if you were awake. But when it went down from Persia, Nebuchadnezzar went down and destroyed the Jewish temple and enslaved the Jews and brought them back to Persia, which is basically that part of the world. I don’t know exactly when that book of the Bible was written, but we’ve been fighting- they’ve been fighting over there- for thousands of years and we do need to continue to work as we have to bring about a solution but the solution in Iraq, if it’s predicated upon that solution taking place there needs to be a lot longer book.

Now, as far as Syria and Iran are concerned, the two facilitators for the insurgency in Iraq are Syria and Iran. They are very difficult characters and for the same reason President Bush rightly refused to sit down individually with North Korea and finally because of Ambassador Bolton’s great work, negotiate a multi-lateral agreement where six countries are negotiating with North Korea, not just one. We have got to have the same engagement in the Middle East. If the recommendations of this study committee are to be made possible, France and to a larger extent-Russia, are going to have to ensure that Iran comes to a table maybe not the table, but with a sincere willingness to be a part of the solution rather than a protractor of the problem. Whether they will do that, I don’t know. Iran, the Iranians’, stated purpose and the Syrians’ stated purpose domestic or diplomatically is the absolute destruction of the state of Israel and if you’ve got a peace that’s predicated on the Palestinian-Israeli solution in part in Iraq, and you put part of the responsibility of that solution on the shoulders on Iran, Syria, and their stated purpose is the destruction of one of those two parties, you’ve got a very difficult time. And the world community needs to hold the Iranians and the Syrians accountable and their state customers like Russia and like France, are going have to come to the table and be a major part of it.

Just yesterday Ahmadinejad commended, brought together in Tehran a group of 60 scholars to teach- to verify- the Iranian belief that the Holocaust didn’t happen. The American they brought to that was David Duke. That’s the level to which we are dealing with in terms of that country. So, I hope, I work everyday and if I can be a part diplomatically and as a responsible citizen can bring about a Palestinian settlement with the Israelis, I’ll do it. President Bush has laid the framework for that if the Palestinians would just recognize the right of Israel to exist America will support an independent Palestrina state. We have been the forerunner and leader in this, but the entire world community, people other than us, have got to be a part of the implementation of the groundwork for these solutions or it cannot happen. I commend the men and women like Noah Harris, who’ve fought and died, for freedom and liberty in the Middle East. I commend Hunter Hill who’s going back for a 2 nd tour and I instruct myself and advise all of you as your Senator, that as we move forward, we don’t need to rush to make a bigger mistake. We do not need to forget why we got in all this stuff in the first place. Because those that would destroy us on 9/11 are alive and flourishing today. And if they ever think we’ve lost our will to confront them, they will try to control the world by fear. The day they do that, everything Noah Harris died for, everything Hunter Hill is going back to fight for, may not be possible or ever obtained again

Now, lastly, and I hate to start such a serious subject, but I want to take one other minute to talk about my favorite subject; it’s called Delta Air Lines. I want to talk about it because it’s been in the news. Delta has 91,000 employees and retirees in GA. They’re about ready to exit bankruptcy, and there’s been a hostile takeover offer laid on the table. Today’s the 13 th, isn’t it? Today is the 13 th, there’s a creditors meeting in New York City convening in 20 minutes- at 9 o’clock- where Delta and US Airways will make their presentation to the creditors, a nine creditors committee. They’ll make a presentation. Four are bondholders, four are vendors and the last one, the fifth one is the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. I hope and pray that the recommendation of those nine is to not accept a hostile takeover by US Airways. I will do everything I can in my capacity as a member of the Senate and those areas where we have legitimate responsibility to see to it that Delta is able to exit bankruptcy and be Atlanta’s airline and the world’s carrier based in Atlanta, Georgia and not a victim of a hostile takeover after they paid the price to be able to exit bankruptcy.

You have to realize why this is taking place. Delta’s employees and their management have cut their pay twice, and in case of management three times. The unions have come to the table and made huge sacrifices. You flown on a Delta flight lately? The flight attendants, there are less of them and they are doing more work. The pilots, added to, I don’t know when the guy comes on it used to be like they were doing you a favor, now it’s like your best friend is up there flying the airplane. There’s a spirit at that airline, they went to the brink of failure, got together, put their act together, cut the cost of that operation, improved the service and opened routes to places around the world that the American people want to go to. And we do not need somebody to come in and take advantage of all that sacrifice and make a profit off it for their stockholders and finance it on the back of those very employees who’ve sacrificed themselves.

I personally think that Delta will exit bankruptcy the strongest airline in the U.S. and the most profitable and I am going to do everything I can to help them exit independently and not as a captive or a merge or an airline that was taken over. But it’s going to be interesting to watch what the creditors’ committee votes today and what subsequently happens and ultimately what the judge says. As in all cases in bankruptcy everybody gets a say but the judge is the one that matters. And this judge in New York is a very competent and very good judge who has really, I think, made some outstanding decisions along the way to let them exit. So I just wanted to bring that subject up because it’s in the paper a lot. Tom and I spend a lot an awful lot of time working with the management of Delta to make changes in the pension laws for them to be able to make the most noble of all things, which is to honor the pensions of their employees which I conclude this little segment by telling you this story:

US Air defaulted on five billion dollars of pension obligations to their employees and they’re making an $8.5 billion offer to buy Delta. Delta went into bankruptcy and kept its commitment to an $11 billion payout to its employees and to honor their pension plan. So one airline on the back of their employees dropped their pension plan and is going to use that cash in part to buy another airline that fought all the way through bankruptcy to preserve the pensions of their employees. If you were an employees, who would you want to work for? Well, I think it’s Delta Air Lines; it’s the Delta Air Lines you know and I know. Tom and I are going to fight very hard to see to it that they continue to do well and flourish.

Again, as I started, I wish you a very Merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year. I commend Sunny on an outstanding year of service to the Chamber and the Chamber as a whole on the outstanding job it continues to do to make this place the best place in Georgia. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I’ve lived in some other places, and this is the best place in America to live. And they do a great job! I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to serve you in the Senate of the United States. God Bless you.