I want to give some special note to the staff that is seated behind you because they are the ones that go through all of the laborious tasks.

He has been extremely involved in our community, and later after Mel came to the Senate, Skip came up here and gave 6 months of his life as Mel's general counsel here in the Senate office.

Mr. President, for years, I have fought to keep oil rigs off the coast of Florida--both in federal waters and Cuban waters. As we've seen, an oil spill even hundreds of miles away from Florida can send the black stuff onto our beaches and…

Mr. President, on August 21, 1944, laden with precious cargo for the Pacific theatre, the USS Mount Hood, the lead ship of her class for the U.S. Navy, departed Norfolk on her first mission. On board were 296 sailors and 22 officers. The…

I don't have any indication of that, but just a general concern that perhaps their security is not sufficient for them to be able to self-govern.

Hopefully, the NATO support would extend to providing help for the sustainability into the future because until we secure the country, a political solution is going to be very difficult.

I would hope that we would do so, recognizing that from that point forward, that we would expect the Iraqi Government to pick up a bigger share of the cost that we would incur.

I hope that as we do that, we will continue to find a way to do it, obviously, as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible but not be short on personnel simply because we may end up with fewer pilots.

The next generation tanker contract has been awarded, and I congratulate you on that.

I have been a strong proponent of benchmarks with metric measurements for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Let me add my appreciation for your service, and all the men and women wearing the Air Force blue, supporting all the efforts around the world.