VIDEO: Sen. Robert Byrd on Iraq invasion – Mar. 13, 2003
By Mugsy - Last updated: Monday, June 28, 2010 - Save & Share - Leave a Comment
Senator Robert Byrd passed away this morning at the age of 92.
Here is Sen. Byrd’s prescient speech warning against the invasion of Iraq on March 13, 2003… six days before the invasion (40 min):
While I highly encourage you to watch the entire 40 minute speech, here are a few highlights:
- “The cost of occupying Iraq has been estimated to be between one and four Billion dollars a month!” … “That’s one to four dollars for every minute since Jesus Christ was born!” … “and these costs do not include the cost of rebuilding Iraq!”
- “What if Saddam goes on the lam?” We could be tied up in Iraq for months hunting him down.
- “It will be up to the US to support 23 million Iraqis” after we leave them without a functioning government.
- There’s the cost of reconstructing Iraq. … “Building roads just to deliver humanitarian relief.” “Providing electricity for hospitals.” “Drinking water.” “Phones.” etc.
- General Shinseki, “who refuses to back down on his estimate of three to five hundred thousand troops needed to secure Iraq. “Now there’s a man who doesn’t break & run!”
- “Gen. Barry McCaffrey estimated the occupation would take five years.”
- “We risk becoming the next Colonial Power to occupy Iraq. Those who greet us as ‘Liberators’ in 2003 may come to view us as ‘interlopers’ in 2004, 2005, 2006, and beyond.”
- “We will have to rearm and rebuild the Iraqi army so they can protect themselves from neighboring nations once they have been weakened. … The Arms Industry must be salivating at the prospect of rebuilding the Iraqi Army from scratch.”
- 4:12:55 – “Our President [Bush], back when he was Governor running for the office he now holds, said he sought an end to the peace-keeping missions in the Balkans [Bosnia], but we are now staring in the face of a peace-keeping mission that DWARFS that of the Balkans!” … “I am astonished that a President SO opposed to ‘Nation building’ would then LAUNCH military scenarios that so clearly culminates in that very outcome.”
Senator Byrd, you will be missed.
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