Political Quotes

“Well, I appreciate your comments and thank you for saying that. Also, let me ask you one further question. You talked about Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and you touched on the fact that they contributed to the death of some of our finest young men and women in this country who died in Iraq. Can you elaborate on that? Mr. DeSANTIS. Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of people know there were a lot of tough years in Iraq, particularly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. You had a massive insurgency. That initial insurgency in 2004 in places like Fallujah that reared again in 2005, 2006, and 2007 and was finally defeated by the surge was primarily a Sunni insurgency, and so that is what a lot of Americans think about when they think about what is going on in Iraq. And no doubt, that was huge fighting. We lost very good men and women in that. Eventually we were able to defeat AQI, I might add, in 2007-2008. In the Baghdad area and some of the parts of southern Iraq where it is overwhelmingly Shia, the groups that would rise up against the United States would be the Shiite militia groups, which are backed and funded by the Iranian regime. In fact, Iran's Quds force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, that is a designated terrorist organization. Quds force was involved in Iraq. They were known for doing--and we know about the IED attacks, roadside bombs, those were very serious.…”