Political Quotes

“first I'd say that perhaps I'm here endeavoring on the impossible dream, and that would be if we could just simply use this great communication skill that we all have and use it to communicate, so that we could exchange ideas and be able to agree when we agree and disagree when we disagree on the fundamental philosophy that's there, not because we came to the floor to disagree, because we don't. We're not advocating here for permanent bases. And there's nothing in the language of this amendment that advocates for permanent bases. This is a clarification that says we're not going to foreclose our responsibility to be able to negotiate temporary bases in Iraq or anywhere else. We've never had our United States military anywhere in the world where we didn't have some kind of temporary basing rights agreement. We have never had a permanent basing rights agreement anywhere. And we have closed many bases across Germany and Europe. We've done that. We'll do so, and we're doing so in Iraq. We've happened over a number of different bases. The last number I heard was 33. It's probably many more than that into the hands of the Iraqis for their control. And so the message that needs to come from here, if we're concerned about the message that we're sending, we should stand up and say we agree. We don't intend to stay in Iraq permanently.”