John Kerry

I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.

The administration has really unleashed unbelievably dangerous forces, rather than have contained those forces and brought the world to our side.

No. If you can't -- if you can't do one of those two things, you have hit the nail on the head. We have a serious containment issue.

Well, I suggested that, for the moment, if you were to increase the special forces units and the -- and the other sectors that I talked about by about 5,000, I believe you could send an important message and give us very, very significant…

The fact is that Afghanistan always was the place where it was of greatest intensity. And this shifting has cost us enormously.

Well, I think that is ridiculous, on its face.

If -- if Afghanistan goes backwards, we are in serious trouble.

Well, the truth is, as I think General Pace said over the weekend, every member of the coalition, ourselves included, have been dragging their feet.

Why do we have seven times the number of troops in Iraq that we have in Afghanistan? I think that tells the story.

No. I think that the Taliban -- well, winning -- I think it is a losing proposition right now, in the sense that it's going downhill and backwards. The Taliban is resurgent in the south. And there are enormous difficulties on the border.

There are. Senator Harkin wants to speak for a few minutes. I know Senator Feingold wants to speak.

They are drawn down. There is a huge debate in Great Britain. They are prepared to draw down. They are ready.

Yes, for the beginning of the transition. But as it makes very clear, if you get to 2 months before the end, or 3 months, and you can see the progress being made, and there is another month or so that a certain number of troops need to be…

Most likely in Kuwait, Qatar, the Gulf States, if you work out a security arrangement.

Well, if that is all that gets in the way of this, Mr. President, I am confident we can find expediting language or other language that would resolve it. But I will tell you, Congress is going to be dealing with this issue next year at…

May I say respectfully, we will continue to be able to do that. Over the course of the next year, with over-the- horizon capacity and with our ability to move in an emergency, we are not going away. We have plenty of troops in Kuwait. We…

And they lost a million people fighting for almost 10 years for their country. These are the same people. Four years later we are still driving trucks down the street and our guys are taking IEDs. Are you telling me that they don't have…

Let me say to the Senator, I know he doesn't want American troops in the middle of a civil war. I know he doesn't think that that is why we sent our troops there.

Can I just finish the question? Would the Senator then not agree that there are serious limits on what our troops can do to resolve sectarian violence?

I said, the Senator from Virginia has not said anything outrageous that begs a question at this point. But I will say this: I do understand the difficulties that the manager was under.

I just yield him 15 minutes. I don't intend to talk all night, but I hope to have the chance to speak.

I wonder if it will be possible to let the Senator from New Jersey speak for about 15 minutes and then I resume the floor?

As I said, we would like 30 minutes each, and then we will come back afterwards.

At that point I would hope that Senator Feingold and I would have an opportunity to introduce the amendment itself.

We agreed that since these two Senators are under a timeline difficulty, we would try to accommodate them. Could we have the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Illinois each speak for 10 minutes?