Jack Kingston: “I thank the chairman. We just heard from the majority leader that this bill fully funds the troops. He is correct, it…”

“I thank the chairman. We just heard from the majority leader that this bill fully funds the troops. He is correct, it fully funds the troops; but it doesn't freely fund the troops. It is like giving a soldier a brand-new uniform and then shackling his foot to an anvil. And that anvil, Mr. Speaker, is politics. Our soldiers fight wars. They cannot take care of Iraqi politics. And yet this bill puts 17 different stipulations on that funding for our soldiers, to say that if these aren't taken care of, then you lose your funding. So it is not fully funding them, because it doesn't freely fund them. We went to Iraq. We made some mistakes. We all on a bipartisan basis, from John Kerry to Hillary Clinton to George Bush, thought there were WMDs over there. There were not. We also thought that once they were liberated, that because of American presence and ingenuity and Saddam Hussein being deposed, that democracy would rise from the ashes. It obviously did not, much to the disappointment of everybody in the world community. And I can say this as a member of the Defense Committee, we have had 4 years of almost 'happy talk' from representatives of the Pentagon. It has been very disappointing. Representatives not of defense as much as from the political side of things. But I know one thing that is true: since the surge, there has been a glimmer of hope that we have rounded a corner.”