Barney Frank: “let me begin on a note of agreement with my predecessor in the well. I do think what we are seeing in Serbia has been…”

“let me begin on a note of agreement with my predecessor in the well. I do think what we are seeing in Serbia has been very encouraging. And I am glad that President Clinton persevered in doing that over the opposition of a large number of Republicans in this chamber who sought to prevent him from carrying out that policy. But I want to talk now about Iraq. We went into Iraq, I thought, unwisely and unnecessarily. I believe that my vote against that was the right vote. But even those who voted for it have a hard time dealing with what has been one of the most incompetently executed major national security policies in the history of this country. And one sign of that is the consistently wrong predictions this administration has made. They said that when we went into Iraq and when they won the war, and the military part was won very easily, despite what President Bush had earlier said, he inherited from President Clinton a superb military regime that won easily the military parts of the efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But we were told that once the military part was over, the people of Iraq would be so welcoming, that it would be fairly easy. Indeed, this administration punished General Shinseki for predicting that it would be a difficult occupation. And, of course, it was a very difficult occupation. But then we were told, well, when we capture Saddam Hussein that will take the energy out of the resistance and things will get calmer.”