Jack Kingston: “There is one Sunni province that went from something like a 2 percent voter turnout in January 2005 to December 15…”

“There is one Sunni province that went from something like a 2 percent voter turnout in January 2005 to December 15, 2005, having over a 60 percent voter turnout. Lots of people risking lives to go to the polls and very enthusiastic about it. When you think about the 300 political parties, when here we worry about Democrats versus Republicans, but 300 different political parties electing 275 members of a new parliament to serve now for 4-year terms, it is going to take awhile to have a coalition government put together. Usually those things take two or three months to happen. But what I saw when I was over there is people wanting to put down the gun and pick up the pencil and pick up the paper and say let's move from the battlefield to the legislative chamber and debate this. There are so many challenges to starting a new nation, but what they need right now is the world community behind them. They do not need world criticism behind them. I think sometimes our disagreements with the administration's foreign policy has led us to be anti-Iraqi people, and I do not think the critics of the administration intend it to be that way, but that is the way it comes out overseas. So I think we have to say, you know, Democrats and Republicans, and Republicans versus Republicans, can disagree on our foreign policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism; but we have to stand behind the Iraqi people. It is in everyone's interest for Iraq to succeed. And this is the point we are at.…”