WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Wednesday delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate calling on his colleagues to support the bipartisan joint resolution he introduced with U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen. The resolution would remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis in Yemen pursuant to the War Powers Resolution. During his remarks, Murphy called attention to the devastating humanitarian consequences this war has caused, noting the thousands of children who have died from starvation and diseases.

Last month, the U.S. Senate voted 63-37 to begin debate on the resolution. This was the first time since the War Powers Act became law in 1973 that the U.S. Senate successful passed a resolution pursuant to the law.

“I have stood here before with posters of malnourished children with distended bellies, 85,000 of them have died from malnutrition or disease” Murphy said. “The world’s worst outbreak of cholera is happening as we speak. 10,000 Yemenis have died from warfare, from bombings or siege campaigns.”

“If it is likely that our ally is perpetuating war crimes in Saudi Arabia, then we cannot be a part of that. The United States cannot be part of a bombing campaign that may be, probably is intentionally making life miserable for the people inside of that country,” Murphy added.

The full text of Murphy’s remarks is below:

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join many of my colleagues in support of passage of the underlying resolution. I was pleased to be one of the original cosponsors, along with the presiding officer and with Senator Sanders, amongst many others, and this is clearly not the first time that I've been to the floor to talk about the crisis inside Yemen and the broader crisis with respect to our relationship with Saudi Arabia that has grown worse and worse, especially in the last several months. And I want to thank Senator Menendez and Senator Corker for taking this incredibly seriously, especially since the death of Jamal Khashoggi who was a resident of the United States here ostensibly under our protection. I am hopeful that we are going to get another big bipartisan vote when this comes up for final passage.

And so I want to reiterate some of the reasons why I think this is incredibly important. First, let me state what I hope is obvious, even for those of us who have been critics of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a very important ally of the United States. It is an important partner for stability in the region. We continue to engage in an important counterterrorism intelligence-sharing relationship with Saudi Arabia. They have helped us track down some very bad people. We have helped them track down some very bad people, Sunni extremists, separate and aside from the argument as to where that movement gets some of its the seed funding, is out to get the Saudi regime just like they are out to get the United States.

Second it’s important to note something that we take for granted in the region. This is this now long-term detente that has existed between the Gulf states and Israel. Something that did not used to be something you could rely on. In fact, one of the most serious foreign policy debates this Senate ever had was on the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia back in the 1980s. The objection then was that by empowering Saudi Arabia, you were hurting Israel and Israeli security. No one would make that argument today because Saudi Arabia has been a good partner in trying to figure out a way to calm the tensions in the region, and, of course, to try to provide some balance in the region with the Iranian regime on the other side continuing to this day to use inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric about the future of Israel.

And so this is an important partnership, and I have no interest in blowing it up. I have no interest in walking away from it. But you are not obligated to follow your friend into every misadventure they propose. When your buddy jumps into a pool of man-eating sharks, you don't have to jump with him. There is a point at which you say enough is enough. Now, I came to this floor three years ago and suggested that time had already come. Mohammed bin Salman, who is the Crown Prince and the effective leader of the country has steered the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia off the rails. And folks seem to have noticed when he started rounding up his political opponents and killing one of them in a consulate in Turkey, but this has been ongoing. Look back to the kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, the blockade of Qatar without any heads up to the United States, the wholesale imprisonment of hundreds of his family members until there was a payoff the size of which was big enough to let some of them out. This is a foreign policy that is no longer in the best interest of the United States and cannot be papered over by a handful of domestic policy reforms that are, in fact, intended to try to distract us from the aggressive nature of the Saudi’s foreign policy in the region.

Of course, the worst example of their regional behavior going off the rails is Yemen. And I don't want to restate the case here. I think Senator Sanders did a great job of it. I have stood here before with posters of malnourished children with distended bellies, 85,000 of them have died from malnutrition or disease. The world’s worst outbreak of cholera is happening as we speak. 10,000 Yemenis have died from warfare, form bombings or siege campaigns.

About two-thirds to three-quarters of those are as a result of the Saudi side of the civil war, but let's make clear there's some really bad actors on the Houthi side as well. Part of the reason that the humanitarian aid can't get to where it needs to get to is because of the Houthis are stopping it from getting it into the areas that they control today. And so, the Saudis bear the majority of the responsibility for the humanitarian nightmare, but there is enough to be spread around. I'm appreciative that many of my colleagues are willing to stand up for this resolution today to end the war in Yemen. I wish that it weren't because of the death of one journalist because there have been tens of thousands that have died inside Yemen, and their lives are just as important, just as worthwhile as Jamal Khashoggi's life was, as tragic as that was. But there is a connection between the two, which is why I've actually argued that this resolution is in some way, shape, or form a response to the death of Jamal Khashoggi for those that are primarily concerned with that atrocity, and here's how I link the two.

What the Saudis did for two weeks was lie to us, right, in the most bald faced way possible. They told us that Jamal Khashoggi had left the consulate, that he got out of there alive, that they didn't know what happened. When of course they knew the entire time that they had killed him, that they had murdered him, that they had dismembered his body. We now know that the Crown Prince had multiple contacts all throughout the day with the team of operatives that did it. And yet they thought we were so dumb or so weak or some combination of the two that they could just lie to us about it. That was an eye opener for a lot of people here who were long-term supporters of the Saudi relationship. Because they knew we had troubles, they knew that sometimes our interests didn’t align but they thought that the most important things that allies did with each other was tell the truth, especially when the truth was so easy to discover outside of your bilateral relationship. And then all of a sudden the Saudis lied to us for two weeks, for two weeks, and finally come around to telling the truth because everybody knew that they weren't.

And so it made a lot of people here think, well, wait a second, maybe the Saudis haven't been telling us the truth about what they've been doing inside Yemen. Because, a lot of my friends have been supporting the bombing campaign in Yemen. Why? Because the Saudis said, we're hitting these civilians by accident. Those water treatment plants that have been blowing up, we didn't mean to hit them. That cholera treatment facility inside the humanitarian compound that was just a bomb that went into the wrong place. Or we thought there were some bad guys in it and it didn’t turn out that there was. It turns out the Saudis weren't telling us the truth about what they were doing in Yemen. They were hitting civilian targets on purpose, they did have an intentional campaign of trying to create misery. I'm not saying every single one of those school buses, or those hospitals, or those churches, or weddings was an attempt to kill civilians and civilians only, but we have been in that targeting center long enough to know -- to know that they have known for a long time what they have been doing, hitting a lot of people who have nothing to do with the attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Maybe, if the Saudis were willing to lie to us about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, they haven't been straight with us as to what's happening inside Yemen. Because if the United States is being used to intentionally hit civilians, then we are complicit in war crimes. And I hate to tell my colleagues that is essentially what the United Nations found in their most recent report on the Saudi bombing campaign. They were careful about their words, but they came to the conclusion that it was likely that the Saudi conduct inside Yemen would amount to war crimes under international law. If it is likely that our ally is perpetuating war crimes in Saudi Arabia, then we cannot be a part of that. The United States cannot be part of a bombing campaign that may be, probably is intentionally making life miserable for the people inside of that country. And so I would argue that this resolution is an appropriate response if you are only concerned about Jamal Khashoggi because it is a way to make clear that if you lie to the United States there are consequences. It is also a way to say to the Crown Prince that we are not going to be partners with you in your most important foreign policy endeavor, the war inside Yemen, if you are not being straight with us about this or other matters.

If you care just about what happened to that journalist, this is still an important vote for you to cast, and I get it that some people have issues with the mechanism by which we get here, the War Powers Resolution. I understand that it is new, that it hasn't been tested before, but I believe that this is the right moment to have this debate and to have this vote. And so I'm hoping that we're going to come to a conclusion here as quickly as we can in which we maintain bipartisan consensus. I just joined several of my colleagues upstairs to express our desire. This isn't the beginning and the end of our debate about what to do with Saudi Arabia moving forward. I support Senator Menendez and Senator Young's legislation to take some additional steps to halt arm sales. I support imposing sanctions on the individuals that are responsible for this crime, but I would also hope that all of us take a little bit of time over the holidays to really think about how we reset this relationship in the region and how we send a signal to the world that there is no relationship in which we are the junior partner, certainly not with Saudi Arabia. And if Saudi Arabia can push us around like they have over the course of the last several years, and in particular the last several months, then it sends a signal to lots of other countries that they can do the same thing. That they can murder U.S. residents and suffer almost no consequences, that they can bomb civilians with our ammunitions and suffer no consequences. This is not just a message about the Saudi relationship, this is a message how the United States is going to interact with lots of other junior partners around the world as well. Saudi Arabia needs us a lot more than we need them and we need to remind folks of that over and over and over again.

Spare me this nonsense that they are going to start buying Russian jets or Chinese military hardware. If you think that those countries can protect you better than the United States, take a chance. If you think the Saudis are really going to stop selling oil to the United States? Do you think that they are going to walk away from their primary breadwinner just because we said we don't want to be engaged in this particular military campaign? I'm willing to take that chance. We're the major partner in this relationship and it is time we start acting like it. And if this administration isn't going to act like it, than this Congress has to act like it. As Senator Graham said, “Sometimes Congress has to go its own way. Sometimes Congress has to reorient American foreign policy when an administration will not.” And with respect to this bilateral relationship, with respect to this egregious, unconscionable military operation inside Yemen, it's time for Congress to step up and right something that today is very, very wrong, and I appreciate all of the great work that Senator Sanders and Senator Lee have done as partners in this. Again, I appreciate the chair and the ranking member for helping guide us through this debate as painlessly as possible. I look forward to coming to the floor again before final passage and look forward to another big bipartisan vote for this. I yield the floor.

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