Charles Rangel: “My colleagues, when the terrorists struck New York City, many of us recognized that the problems that we had as…”

“My colleagues, when the terrorists struck New York City, many of us recognized that the problems that we had as Republicans and Democrats, as blacks and whites, as Jew and gentile, was not nearly as important as working together as a city in order to show our defense against the people who struck against us. And so it was no surprise when we came to Congress to see that our President had thought that that would be the best thing for our Nation to do. So we joined hands with Afghanistan and Pakistan and many other countries that we had serious differences with, but, at the same time, when they declared that they were going to be our partners in the war against terrorism, we took their hands and we thought it would be better to fight the big war than to highlight our differences. How in God's name, at a time like this, can we really say that Castro and the Cubans, 90 miles from our shore, represent a threat to our national security when we know that they, too, have joined in this great war against terrorism?”