Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week was the second of 2 weeks of the Easter recess. A number of us took that opportunity to travel to places around the world where our Nation is involved and has great interests. Senator Ensign, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Tom Udall, and a Congressman from Virginia, the First Congressional District of Virginia, named Rob Wittman, and I together visited--it was a 6-day trip--several days in Afghanistan and a couple of days in Pakistan as well, places I suspect the Presiding Officer has been or will be visiting. I led a similar congressional delegation almost 10 months ago to both countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I had gone there right after the President had laid out his strategy for making progress in Afghanistan to restore the rule of law, to make sure the Taliban does not come back into power and provide sanctuary for al-Qaida to launch attacks against us or any other nation. The President, at the time, my colleagues may recall, said we were going to do a couple of things. He suggested a year ago that we launch a military offensive, almost like a military surge on a modest basis, and we do the same thing with a civilian offensive. What he called for a year ago was to commit an additional 10,000 marines, commit 7,000 Army troops, commit 4,000 U.S. trainers to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan national police, and to also send over about 150 additional Black Hawk helicopters.…”