Chris Murphy: “I mean, this election had to mean something. I mean, people spoke, they went out there in numbers in parts of the…”

“I mean, this election had to mean something. I mean, people spoke, they went out there in numbers in parts of the country that we haven't seen in a long time. And they spoke with a pretty loud voice that they wanted a different course of direction in Iraq. Now let me read something somebody said a few years ago in 1997. Mr. Ryan, when he was joining us here, talked about the fact that there is a little bit of double talk this week from folks on the other side of the aisle, this idea that Congress really needs to back off and let the President do his business. Well, that wasn't the line coming out of here in 1997, when Congress thought something very different about the oversight responsibility of this body when it came to the effort in Bosnia. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee at that time was a gentleman named Floyd Spence from South Carolina. Here is what he said. This is his floor statement supporting the bill that was going to withdraw funding essentially from the President's intervention in Bosnia. He said, today's vote will call for the withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from a peacekeeping operation of growing expense and seeming unending duration.”