Steve Israel: “I spent some time this evening with the gentleman and with one of our best generals, and he was telling the story of…”

“I spent some time this evening with the gentleman and with one of our best generals, and he was telling the story of visiting with a critically wounded soldier in a military hospital and walking out with that soldier's mother. And the mother said, General, my son is not sleeping at night. And the General said, well, of course he is not sleeping at night, look what he has been through. She said, no, General, he is not sleeping because he is up all night thinking about the fact that his unit is still in Iraq and he is worried about them. That is the sacrifice that we are talking about and the dedication and the professionalism, and we have an obligation to those men and women to protect them. If the gentleman would allow me to make a concluding point. This front page newspaper tells the story of contrast, and the same contrast is played out on the floor of the House frequently. You have got this front, top of the newspaper that says ``Ann the Ripper Brings Campaign Against 9/11 Widows to Long Island,'' and then you have the rest of the page devoted to the possibility of front-line shortages of critical medical equipment. These guys get less so that Ann Coulter, who writes a book calling 9/11 widows witches and harpies, who will make a lot of money off the proceeds of that book, can get a bigger tax cut. How is that fair in America today? How is that just? How does that do justice to these people? It doesn't. We can do better. The Democrats will do better.…”