Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. To be perfectly honest, I am shocked that Congress hasn't already done this--absolutely shocked. This should have been done in 1943. The Doolittle Raid was the most important military event of its time. For those of you who don't understand it, right after Pearl Harbor, being attacked, at the time, by the strongest military in the world at the top of their game, they did catch us by surprise and destroyed our Pacific fleet. We were sitting back trying to regroup, trying to get it going, trying to get troops going. How do we hit back? How do we prove that we can do this? The Doolittle Raid was all about that. As you heard, a previous speaker said ``volunteers.'' Now, they were professional military, but they volunteered for this mission. Why were they asked to volunteer? Because everyone saw this as a death sentence. Nobody really thought they would ever come back. Why? Because the planes they flew were bombers, heavy bombers for those days--small compared to what we have today--flying off of aircraft carriers that, again, in today's Navy wouldn't be anything. Small aircraft carriers. No one had ever taken a bomber off of an aircraft carrier prior to this raid. No one had ever done it. No one thought it could be done. They got within a certain mileage of Japan beyond where they were supposed to go. They were told bomb Japan, land in China. Not enough fuel to get back.…”