Walter B. Jones: “The most important point is to say, Thank you, men and women in uniform; you are great, you are magnificent, we are…”

“The most important point is to say, Thank you, men and women in uniform; you are great, you are magnificent, we are behind you 100 percent. Two very quick stories. Six months ago Gene Taylor and I went to Walter Reed. We went into a room that we were carried into and saw a mother with tears in her eyes, a father, and we shook their hands. Then the Army colonel took us to the bed to speak to the Army sergeant who had been wounded in Iraq. We thanked him. We told him he was a hero. And he was just great. His fiancee was sitting at the end, at the foot of the bed. We met her. Then he said, I don't know if my opinion matters to you gentlemen. And we assured him it did matter. It mattered greatly. He said, well, let me share this with you. I have been to Iraq three times. He said, I don't care if you are there 5 years or 10 years, you cannot change the people. If you look at the history, he is probably right. But then after he said that you cannot change the people, Mr. Speaker, he pulled the sheets down from his waist and we saw that above his knees his two legs were gone. In his third tour in Iraq he lost his legs.”