John Kerry: “Four years ago, as we all know too well, we sent our young men and women to Iraq for a war that many of us now believe…”

“Four years ago, as we all know too well, we sent our young men and women to Iraq for a war that many of us now believe was a grave and tragic mistake. Day after day, month after month, the administration has repeatedly exacerbated that mistake by leaving our soldiers in the field without the equipment and without the protection they need and deserve, knowing full well what the lethal consequences would be. There will be and there is disagreement in this body over the next difficult steps to take in Iraq. We can disagree on troop numbers. We can disagree on a timetable. We can disagree on the shape of a future political settlement in Iraq. Surely, we can all recognize those are honest differences of opinion. But there is no difference of opinion and there is no disagreement here that we ought to be giving our troops absolutely everything they need in order to accomplish this mission. There is no disagreement that those troops deserve everything they need to be as safe as possible, and there should be no disagreement that when we ask young men and women to leave their families to fight deadly foreign enemies halfway across the globe, when we ask them to put their lives on the line, the least we owe them is the equipment they need to protect themselves and get the job done. One soldier dying from a roadside bomb because he or she does not have the body armor is one too many.…”