Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, let me begin on a note of agreement with my predecessor in the well. I do think what we are seeing in Serbia has been very encouraging. And I am glad that President Clinton persevered in doing that over the opposition of a large number of Republicans in this chamber who sought to prevent him from carrying out that policy. But I want to talk now about Iraq.

We went into Iraq, I thought, unwisely and unnecessarily. I believe that my vote against that was the right vote. But even those who voted for it have a hard time dealing with what has been one of the most incompetently executed major national security policies in the history of this country. And one sign of that is the consistently wrong predictions this administration has made.

They said that when we went into Iraq and when they won the war, and the military part was won very easily, despite what President Bush had earlier said, he inherited from President Clinton a superb military regime that won easily the military parts of the efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq . But we were told that once the military part was over, the people of Iraq would be so welcoming, that it would be fairly easy. Indeed, this administration punished General Shinseki for predicting that it would be a difficult occupation. And, of course, it was a very difficult occupation.

But then we were told, well, when we capture Saddam Hussein that will take the energy out of the resistance and things will get calmer. And we captured Saddam Hussein, fortunately; but unfortunately things did not get better. And then we were told, well, we will turn over the government of Iraq to an Iraqi set of officials and then things will get better. And we turned over the government to an Iraqi set of officials and things have gotten worse.

Now, we are accused by those who do not think debating public policy is appropriate in a democracy. Apparently, they have this very odd idea that the more important the issue, the less appropriate it is to debate it. Democracy in their minds should be conducted about trivia; but when we are talking about important issues of war and peace and the lives of our young people and the national security, somehow it becomes inappropriate to engage in the democratic debate that is at the nature of our governance.

But we have an additional witness to the argument that Iraq remains sadly unsafe in many places for this government and its supporters, the United States government. And we are not just talking about Fallujah or the Sunni Triangle. We are talking about Baghdad. We recently had, and I read this in the New York Times last Thursday, a wire service article, the United States government last week, or at least I learned of it last week, recently gave asylum to a 15-year-old Iraqi girl who asked for asylum on the ground that her support for the American military made it unsafe for her to live in Baghdad.

In other words, we now have an official recognition by the United States immigration officials that being a supporter of the American military in Baghdad is so dangerous as to justify the extraordinary act that is a grant of asylum. This is not critics of the administration saying that. This is not Fallujah. This is Baghdad. This is a sad statement, and I am terribly troubled by this. I am glad we gave this young woman asylum given those circumstances.

A young woman who expressed her support for the American military now tells us that it is unsafe for her to go to Baghdad. Well, if in fact things are calmer, let us talk about an election. They are going to have an election throughout the country. Baghdad is one of the places where we are told things are fairly secure.

Well, if it is secure enough to have a free election, why is it so insecure as to say that a 15-year-old has to be given asylum in the United States because it is not safe for her to remain in her own country because she sided with America.

What is clear is that the result of the Bush administration,s Iraqi policy has been a sad deterioration, in my view, of the true national security policy of this country; and the misinformation, the self-delusion, the inaccuracy, the infighting, the inconsistency that have marked this policy have resulted in a very, very sad situation. And as long as the President and his chief advisors insist on defying reality and blaming the messengers who bring forward the evidence of this sad reality, it is unlikely that things will get better. The self-deluded are rarely the self-correcting.