Eliot Engel: “I want to spend the next few minutes talking about Iraq. In 1991, I voted for President Bush's program, Operation Desert…”

“I want to spend the next few minutes talking about Iraq. In 1991, I voted for President Bush's program, Operation Desert Storm. I was one of a minority of Democrats at that time to do so because I felt then and feel very strongly now that we need to have a bipartisan foreign policy; that once the President, whomever the President is, makes a decision, it is incumbent upon all of us to rally around the President's decision and to support our troops who may be in harm's way. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I have been particularly chagrined to listen to the remarks of some of the critics of the President's policy in Iraq, the Senate Majority Leader and others, who have spoken out and said that this agreement, which the Clinton administration supports and which I support, have said it is not a good one. I think it is very, very important that we rally around our President and that we support this agreement. Is this a perfect agreement? Of course not. Are there some ambiguities in this agreement? Of course there are. But as Secretary of State Albright said the other day, let us try to work out these ambiguities. Let us place the onus on Saddam Hussein. Let us test this agreement. We are testing it by keeping our forces in the region. We are testing it by making sure that American power and American might remains there to force Saddam Hussein to comply.”