Two leading Senate moderates today unveiled their proposal to transition the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq to fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, maintaining the integrity of Iraq’s borders, continuing the training if Iraq security forces and protecting U.S. personnel and assets in the country.
Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson and Maine Senator Susan Collins introduced their proposal for a way forward in Iraq as an amendment to H.R. 1585, the Department of Defense Authorization Bill.
“We need to get our troops out of the civil war in Iraq and immediately refocused on our national security objectives there: fighting terrorism, protecting American personnel and assets, training Iraqi security forces and maintaining the border integrity of Iraq,” said Senator Nelson. “Our proposal is a bipartisan realistic and tactically feasible approach for moving forward in Iraq.”
Senator Collins said, “I oppose the current strategy in Iraq and believe it is time to redefine our mission. The fact is, the Iraqi government appears to have made little progress toward the goal of resolving the sectarian violence, which requires a political, not a military solution. I am proud to join again with Senator Nelson on this bipartisan amendment that will force U.S. troops out of combat roles, restricting them to fighting terrorism, securing Iraq’s borders, and training Iraq forces.
The Nelson-Collins Iraq policy amendment would:
- Transition the mission for our troops to:
- Protect Americans and American interests and facilities in Iraq
- Protect the integrity of Iraq’s borders – territorially
- Engage and eliminate Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq
- Continue training of Iraqi military and security forces
- Calls for the transition of mission to begin immediately and sets a goal of completing redeployment by March 31, 2008.
Earlier this year, Nelson was instrumental in including in a supplemental spending bill the benchmarks and progress report approach for measuring progress in Iraq. The First progress report is expected to be presented to Congress this week. Media reports have indicated that the Iraqi government has made little or no progress on key political, economic and security initiatives and other benchmarks. A second report is due September 15.