Leonard L. Boswell: “First, I, too, would like to join with others in our appreciation of Chairman Skelton and Mr. Duncan for their good…”

“First, I, too, would like to join with others in our appreciation of Chairman Skelton and Mr. Duncan for their good work, 58 unanimous votes coming out of committee. That says a lot. Madam Chairman, I think it's important for us to realize some things in the future that are going on with our forces that many of us who participated over the years, you and I, have got some concern about, that's readiness. If you haven't talked to your adjutant generals back in your home State, you ought to do that. You ought to have a talk with them, because it's something we ought to address. I know the ranking member and chairman understand this, but we have to do it. You have got a good bill. You have done what we ought to do. We have to think about what happens next. I think we have to realize that there is some disparity about what is going on, even in the Iraq operation, because we have to figure out what we want to do in the future. What do we want as the policy, as the structure, as we think about the added forces that we are going to have to do. We think about deployment. You know, they tell me that about 80 percent of the casualties over there, and probably some of you have more accurate information, are from the infantry. But they are only about 20 percent of the force. You think about that, there's something going on here that's evolved in all of this that we haven't really addressed.”