Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. And, you know, that takes me to another point, which is the Iraqi Army. It has been said many times, and probably will be said again in this debate, that we should have kept the Iraqi Army intact. Now, the road that is not taken is always the smoothest. But looking at the Iraqi Army, at Saddam Hussein's army, he had 15,000 Sunni generals. How are you going to maintain an efficient Iraqi Army that is responsive to a new fledgling civilian government with 15,000 Sunni generals running this thing? We have had to build this army from the ground up. I think that history will show that that was the right thing to do. To have an efficient army, you have got to have a couple of things. You have got to have an army that has a chain of command which is responsive, that means that the private does what the sergeant says and the sergeant does what his platoon leader says, and right up the chain of command. And you have also got to have an army that is responsive to the civilian government, to that new defense minister that was just put in place. I do not think you are going to do that with 15,000 Sunni generals. I have seen that statement tossed around so much that I hope to be able to talk to some of the folks a couple of years down the line when it is reflected.…”