Carol Shea-Porter: “Thank you, Congresswoman. I am on the Armed Services Committee and we've had many, many hearings on this issue. It has…”

“Thank you, Congresswoman. I am on the Armed Services Committee and we've had many, many hearings on this issue. It has become very clear to me that we need a plan to redeploy responsibly and to start it immediately. First, let's go over some of the facts once again because it is a national security issue here. There were no Iraqis on the plane that day. 9/11, there were no Iraqis. But we were attacked by people who had been trained in Afghanistan in Osama bin Laden's group, and we needed to go there. We needed to go to Afghanistan. We still need to win in Afghanistan. But somehow or another we got diverted to Iraq, and we have paid the price, and the Iraqis have paid the price as well. We are now spending $10 billion a month, that we acknowledge, in Iraq. We really don't know the cost. We borrow money from Communist China to pay for this. I was a military spouse and so I'm feeling particularly protective of our troops. Our soldiers are exhausted. We send the same team in over and over again. This is an American problem, not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It's an American problem, and it calls for an American solution. Let us talk about what it looks like in Iraq right now. And I have been there. What it looks like right now, and it was the independent Jones report that verified this, and I appreciated the report very much, retired General Jones and his commission. What they talked about was 2.2 million Iraqis displaced within the borders of Iraq.”