Bob Kerrey: “on the heels of passing a much-needed pay and benefits increase for the men and women who give up their freedom to serve…”

“on the heels of passing a much-needed pay and benefits increase for the men and women who give up their freedom to serve us in our armed services, I want to direct my colleagues' attention to one longstanding military mission these men and women have been assigned. That is the mission of containing the threat of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Mr. President, I do this for a couple of reasons. First is that I have argued for a stronger military operation in Iraq. Indeed, I have argued to change the objective from containment to replacement. And oftentimes people come back and say, well, if we do that, we will risk lives. I would like to describe to my colleagues--in fact, we have a military operation going on today, have had since 1991; and this military operation is costing us dearly both in lives and in money.”