Bob Filner: “Mr. Kucinich, I thank you for your courage in bringing this debate to the floor. It's like the 600-pound elephant in the…”

“Mr. Kucinich, I thank you for your courage in bringing this debate to the floor. It's like the 600-pound elephant in the Nation. This war has gone on and on--and we never discuss it. I want to applaud the courage of Mr. Jones from North Carolina. He has taken more than a lot of grief from his own party, and he has stood up to that with courage that is admirable. I want to look at this debate, my colleagues, from the point of view of former chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, a position in which I was honored to serve. Mr. Kucinich, I think you underestimate the cost of this war. I've never seen you so conservative. I had a hearing last year before the Veterans' Affairs Committee in which Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stigleitz testified. He said these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be $5 trillion to $7 trillion wars over their whole course. Let us not forget--and that's not calculated in your costs. Mr. Kucinich--the veterans, those who have served in this war with great courage, with great professionalism. Treating these veterans costs hundreds of billions of dollars more, and we're not considering that when we talk about ending this war. We've been told that there have been about 45,000 casualties in these two wars in the last 10 years. Then why have almost 1 million people shown up at the Veterans Administration hospitals for war-related injuries? One million. This is not a rounding error.…”