Anthony Weiner: “first of all, I think that I speak for all of our colleagues and all of us here in paying tribute to the 137,000…”

“first of all, I think that I speak for all of our colleagues and all of us here in paying tribute to the 137,000- some-odd American men and women who are fighting in Iraq, the 25,000 or so that are fighting in Afghanistan. We are here to do what we can to honor them. We are trying to express our patriotism. We are trying to do what we are obligated to do by standing up here. The notion that it is our patriotic duty, our obligation to sit silent and to do whatever the President thinks is best and blindly walk in that direction, that is not the way to honor the troops that are there. I can imagine the challenges that they face every single day, and would the message going back to them be most appropriate that just as often as they wake up in the deserts of Iraq trying to figure out why people are shooting at them and what they can do to stop it, they should know that every single day we here in Congress are trying to think about ways to make their mission safer and make it more possible for them to accomplish their mission and to extract them as soon as possible. We pray that they are successful. Although I strongly oppose the President's initiative, that I am going to vote ``yes'' on this resolution, I pray that they are successful. I pray we don't lose another life. We want them to be successful. But it is not enough just to be silent and to be prayerful. We also have to act.…”