Mike Pence: “I thank my friend for his powerful reflections on an extraordinary trip. Before I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.…”

“I thank my friend for his powerful reflections on an extraordinary trip. Before I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), who led his own delegation in August to Operation Iraqi Freedom, I wanted to reflect for just a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, on a few of the soldiers I met from Indiana, the kind of people the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) was just talking about. In fact, a very detailed version of this appears on my Web site, MikePence.House.gov on our Web log, or blog as it has come to be known. I literally sat down on the airplane flying back from Iraq and typed up my reflections and remembrances while they were still fresh, and I want to excerpt them for just a second, if I can. This first photograph is my conversations with Sergeant Matt Wright, an extraordinary young man from Muncie, Indiana, and part of A Company of the 138th Signal Battalion stationed in Ramadi. To speak about the kind of dedication that my colleague just reflected on, as I talked to Sergeant Wright, he said, with the same kind of smile you see in this photograph, he said, ``Yes, sir, it is good to have you here. Yesterday was supposed to be my wedding day.'' And I said, ``Did you put it off?'' He said, ``No, sir. We moved it up 9 months so we could be married a couple of months before I deployed for 18 months to serve my country in Iraq.'' I mean, here was a man's dedication to his beautiful wife and his dedication to his country on full display. Sergeant Matt Wright.…”