Political Quotes

“I think it is time to tell the American people, ``steady on.'' This operation in Iraq is proceeding according to plan. Our troops are well equipped, well trained, well led. Don Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, is doing a great job. General Tommy Franks, who is the CINC commander and in charge of the operation, is doing a great job. This plan was well thought out, and it is being well executed. And as I looked at the map and looked at the bridges which we overran so quickly with a fast armor attack in which the defenders, the Iraqi defenders, did not have a chance to blow, I look at the oil wells that they did not have a chance to fire up, to put aflame as they did in 1991 when we came into an Iraq that was literally carpeted with fires because the Iraqi defenders had a chance to ignite their oil fields, when I look at the other key infrastructure that has not been destroyed and was not laid down in the wake of the retreating Iraqis as a barrier to the American forces, one thing comes to mind, a lightning armor strike as fast as we moved it up those narrow causeways coming up through the center of Iraq has paid off. And if we had waited, if we had held back, if we had choked those roads with more men and material and we had given them time to blow key bridges, we would have had engineers working in an exposed manner, being subjected to sniping, to potshotting; and we would have taken, in my judgment, Madam Speaker, more casualties.”