Bill Clinton: “Thank you for your laid-back welcome. [Laughter] Thank you, General Ellis. Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here with a…”

“Thank you for your laid-back welcome. [Laughter] Thank you, General Ellis. Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here with a great delegation of Americans, including the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Army, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; many other distinguished military officials and officials from the White House; and a truly astonishing delegation from Congress, of both Democrats and Republicans together. We have Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska; Senator Joe Biden of Delaware; Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut; Senator Dan Coats of Indiana; Representative John Kasich of Ohio; Representative Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania; Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri; Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland; Representative Mac Collins of Georgia-- anybody from Georgia? [Cheers] Representative John Boehner of Ohio; and Representative Steve Buyer of Indiana--anybody here from Indiana? [Cheers] I'm proud of all of them. And let me say, we came here for two reasons today. We came here, first of all, to say thank you to all of you, to say what you are doing for your country is a good and noble thing. You are doing it well, and we are grateful. We know it's tough to be away from home at Christmas time. We know it's hard to be away from your families. But you are doing something profoundly important. The second reason we came here was so that we could go to Sarajevo and see the leaders of the Muslims, the Croatians, and the Serbs, and tell them that they made an agreement at Dayton that we are doing our dead-level best to help them enforce, and they promised that they would live and work together and build one country without ethnic prejudice or unfairness to any group; that we would not only end a war, that they would build a peace together; and that we in the United States were determined not only to do our part but we expected them to do theirs. And these good people in Bosnia, these little children, who have suffered so much, they deserve leaders who honor the commitments they made at Dayton and build a better, brighter future. And we wanted to do that with one voice, without regard to party. So I want to say a special word of thanks to Senator Bob Dole and Mrs. Elizabeth Dole for coming. And I would like to give--Senators talk like this all the time; I don't quite know how to do it, but I think this is called yielding a portion of my time. I'd like for Bob Dole to come up here and say a few words. [At this point, former Senator Bob Dole made brief remarks.]”