John Rhodes: “Thank you, Dennis. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning and to just share with you very briefly an experience…”

“Thank you, Dennis. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning and to just share with you very briefly an experience that I had monitoring the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in September of last year. I was invited to join a monitoring team by the International Republican Institute. Frankly, I was invited to join on fairly short notice and I hesitated, because we're all busy people, but my wife said to me, How can you possibly think about passing up an opportunity like this? And I said, Well, you know, that makes a lot of sense, so I said, Yes, I will go to Afghanistan. One of the things I have to tell you is being in Afghanistan is a very interesting experience, but getting to Afghanistan is likewise a very interesting experience. It's a long way from anyplace. Also, speaking of places like Afghanistan, security is an interesting proposition, but I can tell you it is more difficult to get out of Dulles Airport than it is to get into Afghanistan. The country is absolutely beautiful, but it is really a tough place. Kabul is one of the most poverty-stricken places I have ever seen in my experience. But to sum it all up, the Afghans, with very, very little history of democracy and very, very little history of conducting elections, conducted in what was the unanimous opinion of virtually all the international observers a very, very good, well-run, capable election. I personally went to 16 polling places. Our team went to 110- some polling places. This was the IRI team.…”