Phil Gingrey: “I think the gentleman has pointed out something that is very important in regard to the fact that Saddam Hussein, at the…”

“I think the gentleman has pointed out something that is very important in regard to the fact that Saddam Hussein, at the outset of the conflict, just opened the prison doors. I mean, he just literally opened those prison doors and turned all of these bad guys, and when I say bad guys, I am talking about murderers, onto the streets of Baghdad, particularly in the population center. Now, one can just imagine if we did that in this country. In my home State of Georgia, if we just all of a sudden opened that Federal penitentiary in Atlanta and let all of these people out on the street, the number of attacks, assault, battery, assault with a deadly weapon, murder, rape that would occur in the city of Atlanta, and one can understand. One begins to get, I think, a better picture. But as the gentleman points out, there is not mass chaos in Baghdad. We have, yes, some very difficult things to deal with, as the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kennedy) points out, Mr. Speaker. But let me give my colleagues this information about security and force protection that we have begun to restructure. Coalition forces are on the offensive. They are putting constant pressure on the enemy to disrupt some of these attacks. The coalition forces are also deterring attacks with aggressive patrolling, cordons, and raids based on actionable intelligence. I do not think anything is more important than intelligence, and we are beginning to get that.”