Sam Brownback: “Not now. I have limited time, and I want to make this statement, if I may. That we can, at the appointment of our…”

“Not now. I have limited time, and I want to make this statement, if I may. That we can, at the appointment of our military leaders, start pulling our troops away from the Sunni Triangle so we can have the Iraqis taking over more and more of the security in more dangerous areas. I think that is an important thing for us to say here in this debate as well, that in opposing setting a timeframe for pulling out, we are not opposing changing tactics, or if our military leaders say it is time, we can start pulling troops down, let's do it. I want that to take place. But it should be the military leaders doing this, without the dictates of us saying here that we are just going to set an arbitrary timeframe for us to pull on out of this region. I think it sends the exact wrong signal, particularly at this point in time when we have momentum that we have gained and we have an Iraqi government in place. Frankly, through the help of this debate, we are sending a message to the Iraqi people and their government that the United States is not in this for an unlimited period of time. We do expect the Iraqis to step up. You have to step up in taking more of this on and moving more of this forward. I think this should be done on our working with and listening to the military leaders of what they would say would be the right route for us to go on this and not us setting an arbitrary date. This has been, in my estimation, a very good debate to have.…”