Steve Rothman: “how did this happen? We have lost 2,500 American servicemen and women. They have been killed in Iraq. 18,000 U.S.…”

“how did this happen? We have lost 2,500 American servicemen and women. They have been killed in Iraq. 18,000 U.S. soldiers grievously wounded. We have spent over one-third of a trillion dollars in Iraq on this war, so far. Yet, 80 percent of the Iraqi people want us to leave. 80 percent of the Iraqi people want us to leave. They are shooting at our soldiers, blowing up our soldiers with improvised explosive devices. How did we get here? Oh, yeah. I remember. President Bush said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States and had weapons of mass destruction. So many of us voted to send our troops to Iraq to eliminate this threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction and this imminent threat to our national security. {time} 2200 It turned out not to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was no imminent threat to the United States. Well, we deposed him and that is a good thing. But there was a huge power vacuum and many of us felt, even though we were misled going into war, that we had a moral obligation to help the Iraqi people stabilize their country and bring democracy there, and we have been there now 3 years, 2,500 dead, 18,000 of our young men and women wounded, a third of $1 trillion spent, and 80 percent of the Iraqis want us to leave. I support the Murtha resolution, which says that we should withdraw most of the U.S.…”