Neil Abercrombie: “it is not interference at all, believe me, because this is complementary to what has been said. I can tell the gentleman…”

“it is not interference at all, believe me, because this is complementary to what has been said. I can tell the gentleman on April 20 of this year, he is thinking about an army. Here is what he said to the Committee on Armed Services, Mr. Wolfowitz said, on April 20: ``There is no question it would be nice right now to have a larger army.'' These are the same people that were claiming, and reclaimed again today, that General Shinseki was wrong. He did not mention General Shinseki, but he went out of his way to make sure that everybody understood that we did not need a greater Armed Forces even though he said so; it would be nice to have a larger Army but absent that, after all, we can on the 200,000 security forces that he says are now in place. I have his testimony here before me, a written statement given today before the Committee on Armed Services in which he indicates on Page 3 that we are going to be full partners with the Iraqis. This has to do with the sovereignty issue, that they are going to take the lead, he says elsewhere, that they have 200,000 Iraqis in a security force that is a ``work in progress,'' an interesting way of looking at it, that according to the Prime Minister, as related by Mr. Wolfowitz, they are ready to take charge on July 1. There has been enormous progress. So I asked him today, well, is there an end in sight? And there is no end in sight. It is schizophrenic. I pointed that out to him today.…”