Rep. Dicks leading trip to Middle East
Submitted on February 20, 2007 - 5:45pm.
Kayla Webley
Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
WASHINGTON - With Congress in recesses for the Presidents Day holiday this week, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., is spending his break meeting with leaders and Washington state soldiers in Iraq and four other countries.
In the nine-day trip, Dicks and a team of representatives from both parties will also visit Pakistan, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Germany.
In addition to meeting with foreign leaders, Dicks will meet with soldiers from western Washington. He hopes to meet with members of the Fort Lewis striker brigade, who are deployed in Iraq, and members of the Washington National Guard.
Dicks said he wants to talk to the Washington troops about whether they are getting the training and equipment they need and whether a lack of either is affecting their ability to do their job.
Joining Dicks for his third trip to the Middle East are three members of the defense appropriations subcommittee and two freshman representatives, one of whom served in Afghanistan and one in Iraq.
Dicks and the other committee members will be responsible for voting on the supplemental defense budget next month. He said it is important for them to get a firsthand update of the situation.
Dicks is one of many members of Congress who openly oppose President Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.
Dicks spoke Wednesday in the House debate over the a nonbinding resolution that opposes the president’s plan. He supported the resolution, which the House passed on a vote of 246 to 182. Over the weekend, the Senate was unable to get enough votes to bring the resolution up for debate.
“These troops have not let us down, to be sure,” Dicks said in his speech. “They have been let down by a policy that ignores the reality of their situation and by a commander in chief whose only response to what is unmistakably a civil war in Iraq is to place more American troops in harm’s way while sectarian violence plays out in the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.”
On the trip, Dicks plans to meet with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He is also meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.
Dicks said a major challenge is making sure the Maliki government is prepared to govern the country and take charge of its own security, particularly in dealing with the conflict between the Shia militia and Sunni insurgents.
“No one wants a failure here,” Dicks said in an interview Wednesday. “The key thing here is the Maliki government must perform like they’ve never performed before.”
Traveling with Dicks are Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio; Steve Rothman, D-N.J.; Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., and the two veterans, Reps. Christopher Carney and Rep. Patrick Murphy, both Pennsylvania Democrats.
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