Phil Gingrey: “The gentlewoman remembers, I think we all remember, hopefully, that last year the Congress asked for the Iraqi…”

“The gentlewoman remembers, I think we all remember, hopefully, that last year the Congress asked for the Iraqi government to meet certain benchmarks. And this is exactly what Representative Blackburn is talking about now in regard to certain laws that their parliament would need to pass. It was sort of like a, you know, we'll only continue to help you if you promise by a date certain that you will have provincial elections, that you will pass a de-Ba'athification law, which essentially meant that those Sunnis, those brave soldiers that we are calling now and referring to as sons of Iraq, and as I say, mostly Sunnis, that they would have an opportunity to be included, maybe to be officially a part of the Iraqi security force. So the government had to get over the fact that there was this rivalry, if you will, between the Shias in the majority and the Sunnis in the minority and the Sunnis led by the brutal dictator. Saddam Hussein had suppressed, oppressed, murdered so many of the Shias for so many years of his reign of terror that it's difficult to all of a sudden reach out an olive branch, but that's what we asked them to do in regard to de-Ba'athification, and I think it's important. And also asking them to share the oil revenue with all parts of the country, not just where the oil is found in the oil-rich Kurdish region but also in the west where there's very little oil and in the south as you have sharing.”