Brian Jones: “Like all of my colleagues, I went home to my district as the other Members went to their districts. I live in eastern…”

“Like all of my colleagues, I went home to my district as the other Members went to their districts. I live in eastern North Carolina. As do a lot of people, I love my district, and I'm getting the same message: Why are you still in Afghanistan? Why don't you Members of Congress vote to bring our troops home? Why are you spending the money we don't have, and young men and women are getting killed? Again, I'm coming to the floor of the House and reporting on a book I'm reading. It's called ``Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban.'' That's the whole issue. We have defeated bin Laden. He is dead. Al Qaeda has been dispersed all around the world, but we continue to fund a corrupt leader who will not survive in the long term. We all know that, but yet we're playing this little game of spend the American taxpayers' money to keep him in office, and let's borrow the money from the Chinese that we're spending--because that's the way it's happening--to keep Karzai in office. Seventy-two percent of the American people have agreed with most of us in the House--not all--that it's time to bring our troops home. There is not one thing that we're going to accomplish over there. Mr. Speaker, when I saw the national security agreement that the Secretary of State and this administration have signed with Afghanistan, what we're talking about is, after 2014, we will continue to have a military presence of anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000.…”