Bill Delahunt: “I think the gentlewoman asks a very legitimate question, but I do not think you were present in the Chamber when I…”

“I think the gentlewoman asks a very legitimate question, but I do not think you were present in the Chamber when I referred to a statement dated July 13 coming from the Afghan defense minister, a gentleman by the name of Abdul Rahim Wardak, who said that the Afghan Army cannot secure the country without at least 150,000 more troops, five times what it has today, and that in his opinion, and he clearly represents the sentiment of the government, it is an opportunity for the United States to double the assistance given to Afghanistan. In other words, we left Afghanistan before we finished the job. What I find particularly interesting is that we do not hear that from this administration, but the new head of NATO, the NATO force in Afghanistan, a British general, David Richards, made this observation: Afghanistan's Taliban rebels have taken advantage of a power vacuum and grown stronger because the world's attention has been distracted by Iraq. How true. I agree with him. I agree with him. And if one looks around the landscape again, I am sure it has not been on the front page, but we all here present in this Chamber today know what is happening in Somalia. Radical Islamist warlords have taken over Somalia. Winning the war on terror, you know, the rest of the world believes that we are losing the war on terror.…”