Douglas Alexander: “The strongest message I received, both in Iraq and in Tennessee, was this--not that we get out, not that we even win a…”

“The strongest message I received, both in Iraq and in Tennessee, was this--not that we get out, not that we even win a victory of the kind we won in Japan or Germany, but it is time for the United States Government to speak with one voice on Iraq. A retired four star general from Tennessee, who has a lot of experience with the special forces, put it this way to me: He said our biggest problem in Iraq is we are divided and the enemy knows it. It is inexcusable that we in the Senate should spend so much time lecturing political leaders in Baghdad for their failure to come up with a consensus when we ourselves have not been able to come up with a consensus about Iraq. It is time for the Government to speak with a single voice about where we go from here in Iraq. Our troops deserve it and our enemy needs to hear it. I believe that one voice would be a new strategy to change our mission in Iraq from combat to supporting, equipping, and training the Iraqi troops, and then stabilizing Iraq province by province, neighborhood by neighborhood, tribe by tribe.”