Speech of Hon. Barney Frank of Massachusetts in the House of Representatives, Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Mr.FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one the ablest Members of the current Congress, JIM MCGOVERN, has joined with one of the ablest Members in the history of the Congress, [Former Senator] George McGovern to address the troubling issue of Iraq, and they make an eloquent case--with which I completely agree--that ``the United States must now begin an orderly withdrawal of our forces from this mistaken foreign venture.''

[T]he authors…do a superb job of explaining why we should pull out of Iraq. I will note that I join them not only in their basic argument, but in their note that as ``earlier opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq . . . we hoped that our concerns would be proven wrong.'' None of us take any joy in the fact that this has worked out so much worse than the Administration had predicted, but we must draw the consequences from this mistake and not continue with a seriously flawed policy which drains us financially, costs the lives of our military, and makes the situation in the Middle East worse rather than better in so many ways.