WASHINGTON, D.C. – Below are Congressman George Miller’s official remarks regarding “The Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act,” a bill brought to the House floor today by the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Miller supports the bill. For more on Miller’s Iraq position, go to www.house.gov/georgemiller/askgeorge.html

“I rise in strong support of Chairman Skelton’s bill to bring American forces home from Iraq and begin the end of this tragic war -- a war born of lies, ignorance and arrogance.

The cost of the war has been high to our country, to our economy, but most importantly to our men and women in uniform who have taken all the sacrifice for our President's decision to take this country to war in Iraq.

Our military responded honorably to the President’s decision but he failed to honor their sense of duty and courage with a plan designed for success. His failed policy has cost their families, their communities and most tragically it has cost them their limbs -- and their lives.

The war in Iraq cannot be won and it cannot be lost. It can only be brought to an end.

The President continues to display both sheer arrogance and tragic ignorance. He refuses to change policy. Over and over again it is the same thing. ‘Stay the course.’ ‘Give him more time.’ ‘Success is just around the corner.’

The American people realize that staying the course in Iraq was not a plan and is not going to work. I have known this, and many of my Democratic colleagues have known this, for a very long time.

We have heard it from General Odom. And we saw it in the National Intelligence Assessment on Iraq, earlier this year. And now we learn that the Director of the CIA also believes that staying the course will not yield the results the President said he seeks.

The Washington Post today reports that the Director of the CIA General Michael V. Hayden told the Iraq Study Group last year that it would be impossible to create a functioning government in Iraq.

I have long believed that as long as American forces are in Iraq to prop up the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government will never come into its own and the various factions in Iraq will never come to terms with their own future.

Our presence in Iraq is not simply failing to bring violence to an end, or create stability, or ensure a democratic and functioning government. It is in fact preventing those goals from being achieved.

But it comes from no fault of America's soldiers. America's soldiers have done everything asked of them. Yet they continue to be placed in an impossible situation by the failures of this President.

We can no longer leave our troops in this situation with nothing but misplaced hope that things will get better … They will not get better …not for our troops.

They have been treated horribly. Their tours extended to unsafe lengths, repeatedly, and without adequate armor or training. We must redeploy them now and bring them home.

Our own military is clear that the current strategy is not working. But the President apparently listens to no one.

His only hope is that the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate will continue to blindly ascent to his failed policy despite all the evidence that we should be redeploying our troops.

And now the cracks are starting to show in that wall of Republican support that has allowed the President to recklessly keep our country at war in Iraq. Cracks alone do not bring a wall down. But cracks spread.

And each week, one Republican Senator after another openly announces his or her frustration with the President. The test for them will be to turn their frustration into votes against the war.

But in the House, Republicans have shown no willingness to face the reality in Iraq, to acknowledge the horrible consequences to our military readiness, our individual soldiers, and to their families caused by this grotesque war and foreign policy catastrophe.

We will honor our troops when we have the courage to vote to bring them home and end this war. I encourage all of my colleagues to vote for Chairman Skelton’s Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act.”

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