Bill Delahunt: “Yet meanwhile, and these are very valid points that you are making, the United States is bogged down in Iraq. Reports…”

“Yet meanwhile, and these are very valid points that you are making, the United States is bogged down in Iraq. Reports from media outlets just this week, the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, now admit that we have lost control of parts of Iraq. The number of cities not under U.S. or central government control is growing. Pause and think of that for a moment. First Fallujah, then Ramadi, Baqubah and Samarra, now Najaf and Karbala, perhaps soon part of Baghdad City itself, Sadr City. This is reported by the New York Times. The reality is that security is so bad that a U.S. general says it may be necessary to delay or skip over voting in violent areas in order to hold elections in January. But clearly what would that do to the legitimacy of the interim government? What would that do to the future of democracy in Iraq?”