Tina Smith: “a year ago come Friday, I remember watching with some emotion as the television recorded the events in Baghdad, and an…”

“a year ago come Friday, I remember watching with some emotion as the television recorded the events in Baghdad, and an American soldier crawled up a statue of Saddam Hussein and put a chain around its neck and, with the help of American equipment, pulled down that statue to the cheers of a throng of Iraqi people who had suffered for decades under the tyranny of this vicious man, this mass murderer, this fomenter and financier of world terrorism. I saw that day people hungry for a chance at freedom, hungry for a chance to have a new beginning as a people and as a nation. I remember shedding some tears watching that scene. I reflected at the time that I was watching a piece of American history not unlike the fall of the Berlin Wall, not unlike the surrender of the empire of Japan on the battleship Missouri to General MacArthur, a moment in which I was seeing the values of American foreign policy displayed before the entire Earth. As a Member of the Senate and as a student of American foreign policy history, I have always taken great pride in the fact that America does not seek the treasury or the territory of other neighbors and nations. But what we do say to the world is: We hold out and spread the values of our Bill of Rights, of our Constitution, of our Declaration of Independence.”