Political Quotes

“I listened carefully to the statement made by the minority leader, Senator McConnell, the Republican leader. His last statement was about the military drawdown in Iraq. There were some of us on the Senate floor who were here 10 years ago when the vote was taken on the invasion of Iraq, and 23 of us voted no--1 Republican and 22 Democrats--because we felt the focus of American military power and energy should be to avenge what happened on 9/11 by focusing our resources on the great men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. President Bush and his supporters believed otherwise. They called for a war in another country, in Iraq, a country which was not implicated in any way with what happened on 9/11. Twenty-three of us thought that was a mistake. Well, here we are almost 10 years later. We have spent $1 trillion in Iraq, we have lost over 4,400 of our brave men and women who served in uniform, and now we have a leadership in Iraq which is suspect. Maliki, the leader, has shown in the past to be close to the Iranians--not our friends and not the friends of Western values. I am unhappy with that outcome. But when you deal with democracy or some form of it, the people of a country choose their leaders. That is the reality. President Bush, before he left office, negotiated a timetable to bring American troops home from Iraq, and the timetable called for that to happen by the end of this year.…”