Frank Lautenberg: “the topic of very active discussion is Mr. Paul Bremer's comments that are in the papers, particularly the Washington…”

“the topic of very active discussion is Mr. Paul Bremer's comments that are in the papers, particularly the Washington Post, today. I say this with a great deal of respect for Paul Bremer. I think he worked hard to do a very good job. He can hardly be described as a leftwing liberal, for sure. He said something that was, to use the vernacular, kind of a show stopper. He said: We paid a big price for not stopping it (looting) because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. . . . We never had enough troops on the ground. This is our person in charge of the transition from Iraq's former government, purportedly to become a democracy. He is the fellow who was in charge in Iraq. We all, whoever went there, visited with him, listened to him. He worked very closely with the military. He is very skilled. But he said it. ``We never had enough troops on the ground,'' and that was the beginning of the problem in which we are now so deeply enmeshed. We have had generals saying it. We had General Shinseki saying that we needed 300,000 of our troops there to do the job, and not having had enough caused us, frankly, to become mired in a situation that, at least by current appearances, seems as though it is going to hold us there for a long time at a terrible cost in life, terrible cost in family relationships, terrible cost financially as well.…”