Political Quotes

“this is an important week not only because we are going to finish the housing bill this week but also because General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will testify. There are a number of questions they must be asked by Members of the Senate. The first one is will our troops come home soon or when will our troops come home. And I think they should be asked if the Iraq war has made America safer. When the surge began more than a year ago, President Bush labeled the strategy ``return on success.'' As the surge succeeds, according to the President, our troops would come home. We are already hearing General Petraeus has recommended to freeze the troop levels. In fact, there will be more troops after the freeze takes place than before the surge started. I assume President Bush will accept this request by General Petraeus. By the President's own measure, without our troops returning, there will be no success. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be asked a number of other questions. We have seen what happened a week or 10 days ago in Basra: al-Sadr was attacked by the Iraqi armed services. Al-Maliki, the leader of Iraq, didn't notify the American troops or anyone else and simply took off after al-Sadr. That attack was basically a failure. The police didn't police. The Iraqi police didn't police. At least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers laid down their arms and quit. In fact, they didn't lay down their arms, they gave them over to al-Sadr's forces.”