Enough Time Has Been Wasted, Mr. President. Enough!-by US Senator Robert C. Byrd

[kpete]

Published on Thursday, January 11, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Enough Time Has Been Wasted, Mr. President. Enough!
by US Senator Robert C. Byrd
Speech delivered on the floor of the US Senate
Thursday afternoon, January 11, 2007


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I weep for the waste that we have already seen. Lives, treasure, time, goodwill, credibility, opportunity. Wasted. Wasted. And this President is calling for us to waste more.

I say, enough. If he will not provide leadership and statesmanship, if he does not have the strength of vision to recognize a failed policy and chart a new course, then leadership will have to come from somewhere else. Enough waste. Enough lives lost on this President's misguided venture in Iraq. Enough time and energy spent on a civil war far from our shores, while the problems Americans face are ignored, while we wallow in debt and mortgage our children's future to foreigners. Enough. It is time to truly change course, and start talking about how we rebalance our foreign policy and bring our sons and daughters home.

There are a lot of people making political calculations about the war in Iraq, turning this debate into an exercise of political grandstanding and point-scoring. But this is not a political game. This is life and death. This is asking thousands more Americans to make the ultimate sacrifice for a war that we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt was a mistake. There were those of us who cautioned against the hasty rush to war in Iraq. And unfortunately, our cries, like Cassandra's, went unheeded. And like Cassandra, our warnings and our fears proved prophetic.

But we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes. We must learn from the past. We must understand that more money and more troops are not the answer. The clock is running on our misadventure in Iraq.

Enough time has been wasted, Mr. President. Enough!