Bill Delahunt: “please, Mr. President, just give it to us straight, okay? Try a little bit of Harry Truman. Lay it out there, the good…”

“please, Mr. President, just give it to us straight, okay? Try a little bit of Harry Truman. Lay it out there, the good, the bad and the ugly. The American people can handle it. The American people deserve to know. Unfortunately, this particular White House has an obsession with secrecy. But if I can, just for one moment, get back to that $87 billion that has emerged as an issue in this election. I voted against the $87 billion. I do not know how either of my colleagues voted; they voted against it. I dare say we voted against it because rather than providing the money to the Iraqi government as a loan, this White House, this President, insisted that we just give it away to the Iraqi government. It was a big give-away. There is no other major donor to the reconstruction effort in Iraq that did not require the monies that are donated or given to be done on a basis of a loan so that their taxpayers would be repaid.”