Loebsack Discusses Iraq Trip, Outlines Accomplishments

While speaking to Cedar County Democrats Saturday night, Congressman Dave Loebsack said that he’s made progress on campaign promises and that he’s proud of the accomplishments made by Congress thus far in Washington.

“I personally ran on one theme,” he said. “That was restoring hope and opportunity that George Bush and the Congress of the United States had taken away from millions of Americans and tens of thousands of people in the 2nd District. We haven’t gotten as far as we want to yet, but we’ve done a heck of a lot of good things.”

Increasing the minimum wage, making education more affordable, restricting lobbying, creating additional ethics reform and implementing the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission are successes Loebsack highlighted during his speech in front of an audience of roughly 100 people in Tipton.

The former Cornell College professor earned audible audience approval when he acknowledged that much more could be accomplished with a Democrat in the White House.

“I spoke a lot about health care when I ran for this office — and you spoke with me about health care,” he said. “It’s one of the most important things across this district and across this country. We’re trying to begin in Congress by not only protecting the 37,000 Iowa children who were on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or HAWK-I as it is known here in Iowa, but by providing it to 26,000 more. We want to cover 10 million American children in the United States. President Bush wants to cut 840,000. We want to override his veto.”

Loebsack said that although he is unsure if there are enough votes in the House to override the president’s veto, he is certain that the program will be maintained — and that the Democrats will push for expansion.

“When we bring this up again in January 2009 and we have a Democratic president, we are going to fulfill the promise to make sure at least 10 million American children are covered by this program,” he said. “With your help, we are going to do that.”

With only so much money available in the budget, he said, it is doubtful many domestic issues will be addressed by Congress “until we begin to disengage from Iraq.”

Loebsack, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Middle East, described the trip and his disappointment with the way it was covered by at least one member of the media.

“When I got back from Iraq, I landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 4:20 in the afternoon and I was in my office at about 5 o’clock,” he said. “At 5:20 I was on the phone, talking to about seven different reporters. One of the first ones I talked to was Jane Norman of the Des Moines Register. If you look at what she wrote, it’s interesting because — Obviously, I’m learning how to do this, right? I should know that sometimes a reporter isn’t going to report the whole story.”

Loebsack said he took issue with the coverage in the Register because he didn’t feel it was accurate.

“What got reported in that story was that ‘Loebsack thinks that everything is hunky-dory in Iraq’ and that we’re making great progress and all the rest,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that certain parts of Iraq have had some limited military success. Just because there’s some limited military progress doesn’t mean that we need to stay in Iraq for the next 30 or 40 years. That is what President Bush wants us to do. I still am committed to beginning a disengagement tomorrow from Iraq and having our troops out over the course of the next 12 months.”

Response from Jane Norman, the Des Moines Register:

“Iowa Independent reported that Rep. Dave Loebsack said that “he took issue with the coverage in the Register because he didn’t feel it was accurate.” Rep. Loebsack since this meeting has acknowledged that he was quoted accurately in the Oct. 23 Des Moines Register article to which he was referring. The article reported that he said conditions in Anbar province have improved since his last trip there earlier this year, but the question is how much and how much political progress has been made as well.”

He said that he went to Iraq for a wide variety of reasons, but primarily he went there to speak to the troops. He spoke with members of the 833rd Engineer Company out of Ottumwa, who are back in Iraq on their second tour.

“They were here in our country for only 14 months before they were sent back,” he said. “This is an engineering unit that goes out and dismantles [improvised explosive devices]. It is not an easy job as you can imagine. Just before I got there a group of four of them had been involved in an IED incident.”

Although Loebsack could not provide all the details of the incident, one soldier was injured, and while the congressman was told the soldier would recover from his immediate injuries, he said there is no guarantee that “he hasn’t suffered traumatic brain injury.”

“We just won’t know that for some time,” Loebsack said. “He was inside this vehicle — it’s called a MRAP — and his life was saved because this vehicle is a wonderful vehicle. It’s a great vehicle for protecting soldiers, but if you get blown up and your vehicle gets thrown into the sky and you come down, you may not have the outward appearance of injuries. There is a good chance that [the trauma] can cause a lot of other injuries, like brain injury. And, as you know, that can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder as well as a lot of other things.”

Loebsack, as leader of the delegation, was able to make decisions as to where the group would visit. One of the places he chose was a base in nearby Kuwait, he said, because the particular camp was a logistics hub.

“I asked the commander there if tomorrow President Bush decided that the mission was not to continue to send troops to Iraq, but the mission, in fact, was to reverse that and bring the troops and equipment home could Camp Arifjan handle the job? And he said it would be no problem,” Loebsack said. “So, we know we can do it. We know that if we change the mission, we can get the troops and the equipment out.”

Although Loebsack says he now knows that we can get the troops and equipment out from the United States’ several dozen bases in Iraq, he remains unsure as to exactly how long it would take.

“It’s going to take a long time,” he said. “I don’t know if we could do it in 12 months. That’s my goal. The bottom line is that the decision has to be made now — it can’t wait.”