Political Quotes

“Madam President, first, let me thank the Senator from South Carolina for his analysis on Afghanistan as well as his great support for Leon Panetta and his comments about Bob Gates, which I very much share and commented about this afternoon in a very similar way. I particularly wish to commend Senator Graham for his analysis of what has changed in Afghanistan in the last 17 or 18 months, so that the reductions which will be announced tomorrow are not based on getting tired but are being based, I am sure, on the conditions on the ground or in Afghanistan and on the critical changes which have taken place in Afghanistan. I very much agree with his assessment about the surge in the Afghan forces. I was listening to his comments from a monitor, and when I heard his analysis about 90,000 additional Afghan forces, he is exactly right. The surge has not just been 30,000 of our troops but three times as many in terms of Afghan troops. And the importance of that is not just the numbers, not just the training, and not just the literacy, which the Senator pointed out, but also the mentoring and the partnering in the field with coalition forces.…”