Mark Dayton: “Last week, Senator Lieberman and I traveled to Iraq, to Baghdad. When I visited Iraq a year and a half ago, our Senate…”

“Last week, Senator Lieberman and I traveled to Iraq, to Baghdad. When I visited Iraq a year and a half ago, our Senate delegation in Baghdad and other cities, Basra and Tikrit, boarded armed Humvees and with military escort drove throughout those respective cities. Last week, we were confined for security reasons to the heavily fortified green zone, which is the command post of the United States military, our Government representatives, and the Iraqi government. The necessity for those restrictions was made apparent because one of the opposition political leaders with whom we were supposed to meet and where we envisioned traveling for 5 minutes outside of the green zone was the target of an assassination attempt the previous day. He was not harmed, but a suicide bomber killed himself and nine other Iraqis outside the location where the meeting was to occur, which underscores the perilous nature of the environment and the impossibility of providing the necessary and complete security for our own forces who are performing heroically and continue to risk their lives, and in some cases give up their lives, tragically, to protect the Iraqi people from the insurgent forces which are brutal and sometimes lethally effective in what they are intending to do in that particular country.”