Dana Rohrabacher: “this debate has been spirited, it has been heartfelt, and let me say that I appreciate the sincerity as well as the hard…”

“this debate has been spirited, it has been heartfelt, and let me say that I appreciate the sincerity as well as the hard work that has gone into this, but the sincerity on both sides of this issue, and one note of which I am just a little bit upset about, and I will just state it for the record: I think it is disconcerting to me that today this body is being forced to vote on two separate issues, and I am not just condemning the President, but I am also going to put this on the House leadership, which is Republican. When we are talking about issues of life and death, of peace and war, we should not be linking together two separate issues. This is not right. Mr. Chairman, the American people deserve an accountability, deserve us to vote up and down on whether or not we should improve the readiness of our troops without having to know that we are being forced to vote on it because, if we do not, that we will not have some other issue come through, and this is whether we vote for war in the Balkans or whether we vote for readiness. These are two different issues. So I am a little upset about that, and I think the American people deserve better. Finally let me just say about this debate, because this is the last time I am going to have a chance to talk on this, and I will make it very brief: We are debating something that goes far beyond micromanaging. Mr. Chairman, we should recognize what this debate is really about, and it is not micromanaging our troops.”