Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, we have just heard a great example of an important form of political debate. The Republicans specialize in this. It is kind of political necrophilia. There is this love of dead Democrats among many Republicans. Democrats who, when they were alive were trashed by the right wing, once they are dead and safely no longer possibly candidates for office, get lionized. Nothing of course shows that better than with Harry Truman, but it is John Kennedy, and it is others.

The assertion that the Democrats who are supporting this resolution, and the unspoken Republicans who will be joining with us, that we somehow oppose the use of force is terrible history. It is wrong. In fact, the most recent entirely successful use of military force by the United States came from a Democratic President, Bill Clinton--he's still alive, so don't say good things about him--and supported by Democrats in Congress, and it was opposed by many of the Republicans, including many of the current Republican leadership.

Under Bill Clinton, American military forces were used quite successfully; and the result is not perfection but a much better situation in the former Yugoslavia than we had before. And the Republicans brought forth, guess what, nonbinding resolutions.

Now, they pretend to be upset about nonbinding resolutions. Frankly, I was a little encouraged when I heard the Bush administration criticize nonbinding resolutions, because, up till now, I had thought that Bush and Cheney thought that everything we did was nonbinding with regard to national security. So they were at least implicitly conceding that some things can be binding.

But the fact is that the Democrats strongly supported--I didn't mean to make it partisan, they did--the effort in Yugoslavia over Republican opposition.

And then let's talk about terrorists. We were attacked in 9/11 from Afghanistan and overwhelmingly, with only one exception, Democrats in the House and Senate supported the war in Afghanistan. We are continuing to support that war in Afghanistan.

I am critical of an administration which has diverted military resources and energy and political resources from Afghanistan. They are weakening the number one fight against terrorism, which is in Afghanistan. And that is one of the reasons for opposing this war in Iraq.

Now, the war in Iraq has been, in my judgment, the greatest national security disaster in America history. And it isn't one in which we got sucked in and had to defend ourselves. It was an entirely voluntary error. This administration unwisely went into Iraq on inaccurate grounds; and not only did they make the wrong war, they have been disastrously wrong in virtually every decision. So the question now is, are we doing more good than harm to the causes we care about?

I believe, in fact, that fighting terrorism, fighting extremism, fighting that particularly radical fundamentalist form of Islam, not all Islam, obviously, by all means, that that is weakened by our being in Iraq. It has clearly weakened our effort in Afghanistan. The commanders in Afghanistan beg for more troops, and instead they go uselessly to Iraq, uselessly not because of the lack of capacity of the fighting people but because they are condemned to fight in a very mistaken strategy.

It has emboldened radicals elsewhere. This administration predicted that our overthrowing Saddam Hussein would strengthen the forces of moderation. In fact, it has weakened them.

Let's remember that when America invaded Afghanistan with the overwhelming support of both parties and the united support of this country, we were popular in the world. We mobilized the world. And since that time came the invasion of Iraq. And because of the mistaken decision and the poor way in which it is carried out, I do not think there has been a time in recent history when America has been less able to accomplish in the world the things we want to accomplish.

So then the question is, okay, but isn't this escalation going to change that?

There is zero reason to think that. First, we are told this is what the administration says. If ever any group of people forfeited their right to be listened to, it is the collection of people who have shown an aggressive incompetence with regard to Iraq. Can anyone think of a single decision from the invasion forward that has been correct, that has been borne out by events?

So why do you take people who have been wrong about everything, wrong about the politics, wrong about the military situation, wrong about the economy, and then you say, oh, but this time we think they got it right. Maybe it is the theory of random occurrences, that people, having been wrong so often and so consistently, they are owed one. But that is not a basis on which we ought to be making a decision.

This war in Iraq continues to hurt rather than help our efforts overall. If I thought we were doing some good there, then it would be a different story. But the causes of the disaster, in addition to the rampant incompetence of this administration at virtually all levels, the cause of the disaster is internal, it is ethnic and political and a whole range of other things within Iraq. It is not a lack of American firepower.

So to try to resolve this disaster by taking the advice of people who created the disaster and have been wrong about it would be a terrible error, and I hope the resolution passes.