Austin Scott: “You make a very good point, and I think it is tantamount and the American people have seen through and are seeing…”

“You make a very good point, and I think it is tantamount and the American people have seen through and are seeing through the rhetoric of the Bush administration. They are not buying cut and run. The American people went to the polls in November and they did not go to the polls to cut and run. They went to the polls to change direction, a new direction. There is no question about the fact that we have a vital interest in the Middle East. We know that for the foreseeable future, clearly 45 percent of all of the known oil reserves would be under that region and certainly under Iran alone. All of the geologists have pointed out that 25 percent is under that region. There is a great responsibility for us all there. Nobody is talking about cut and run. We are talking about what is happening here is a civil war, and these Iraqis have got to fight that out for themselves, just as surely as it would not have been right for Germany or France to come and plop a hundred or 200,000 troops in the middle of our civil war. That had to be settled by us. They have got to settle their civil war. We have got to contain the situation, and that is how this new direction needs to evolve. I yield back to the gentleman.”