Brian Jones: “When we were debating the issue of Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago, during the 3 minutes of time that I had, I brought…”

“When we were debating the issue of Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago, during the 3 minutes of time that I had, I brought up the issue of rules of engagement. These are the rules that our men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and Iraq have to follow if they're going to be confronted by the enemy. Well, I have been very disappointed that we've put so many restrictions on our men and women in uniform that I, along with two other Members of the House--Jeff Miller, a Congressman from California and Doug Lamborn, a Congressman from Colorado--wrote to Chairman Ike Skelton and Ranking Member Buck McKeon, and we asked for a classified hearing on this issue of the rules of engagement. And, Madam Speaker, in the letter that we wrote to the chairman and ranking member, we cited in there an article from The Washington Post that was entitled, ``This is not how you fight a war.'' One example, one of the United States Army officers serving in southern Afghanistan quoted in this article, ``Minimizing civilian casualties is a fine goal, but should it be the be-all and end-all of the policy? If we allow soldiers to die in Afghanistan at the hands of a leader who says, `We're going to protect civilians rather than soldiers,' what's going to happen on the ground? The soldiers are not going to execute the mission to the best of their ability. They won't put their hearts into the mission. That's the kind of atmosphere we're building'' in Afghanistan.”