Jeff Flake: “Another highlight of the trip, obviously, was meeting with some of the former prisoners of war. It was just striking to…”

“Another highlight of the trip, obviously, was meeting with some of the former prisoners of war. It was just striking to talk to them and to hear about the repression that they had experienced and to hear about the work they are currently doing to try to reunite family members with others that they have not seen or at least to find the remains of family members who have been missing for so long. A difficult task for them, obviously. But these people have been through a whole lot. For those who I heard make references earlier today to we went to Iraq, for what, because Saddam had drained the marshes or drained the swamps in Iraq, the reference to Saddam Hussein draining the area where the Marsh Arabs lived and what an ecological and societal disaster that has become, as actual as that is, it pales in comparison to the human lives that were lost: over a million killed, some gassed, weapons of mass destruction used against the Kurds, mass graves found, people buried alive. The stories go on and on and on.”