Political Quotes

“when I listened to the speech by Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, about Afghanistan, it transported me back in history to October of 2002, when I was a U.S. Senator representing the State of Illinois, just days away from a reelection campaign, and we faced a historic vote here in the U.S. Senate. The vote was whether or not we would invade Iraq; whether the United States would give the President the authority to send American forces to Iraq. There were 23 votes against that invasion. I was 1 of them, 22 Democrats and 1 Republican. I can remember that night so well. It was late, past midnight, when the vote was finally taken. But we had previously taken another vote, and although I had voted against the invasion of Iraq, I saw the invasion of Afghanistan as a different story. We believed that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, responsible for 9/11, were in Afghanistan. And the story was--the story line, and I bought it completely--if we don't tell people like Osama bin Laden that there is a price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocent people, who are we, and who will be the next attacker? So I voted. I voted for the invasion of Afghanistan and believed that was the right thing to do at that moment in history. That vote passed unanimously here in the Senate. There was only one dissenting vote in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California.…”