Neil Abercrombie: “as we stand here speaking, airplanes are coming in every day and every night discharging the wounded. When we can manage…”

“as we stand here speaking, airplanes are coming in every day and every night discharging the wounded. When we can manage to get people acknowledged in the newspaper or on the television as having been killed in Iraq, and I say when we manage to get them acknowledged because more and more this is fading from the front page, this is fading from the A section of the newspaper. We have to pay attention to ex-steroid users running for governor out in California. We are competing with that right now. The clown show is taking place on C-SPAN II right now. Maybe tonight we can forgive the fact that the media once again are not here to record what might be said or not said here with respect to Iraq and its implications because they are watching the clown show. It is no clown show at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It is no clown show at Walter Reed Hospital, where now the grievously wounded are in the thousands. I suppose one could make an argument if it was in the dozens that it might be more acceptable. But it is not. We have the spectacle of the President of the United States now backtracking from the show that he put on on the aircraft carrier, that shameless display of arrogance and hubris. Oh, that was the end of major combat operations. So the family to which my colleague referred, are they supposed to take some comfort with the idea that their son died in a minor confrontation, a minor incident?”