Robert C. Byrd: “So, in essence, you are suggesting, I suppose, that it is cheaper to contract out those services.”

Doesn't this send a signal to the Iraqi people and to the American people that the United States intends to have a large permanent presence there?

In closing, may I say that the President's request includes $658 million for construction of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

The size of the insurgency in Iraq has been consistently underestimated, in terms of the size and the force.

to start--in an appropriations supplemental, a multiyear appropriations request, strikes me to be very, very strange.