Political Quotes

“We're either in or we're out. Unless this Congress acts to claim its constitutional responsibility, we will stay in Afghanistan for a very, very long time at great cost to our troops and to our national priorities. Or we can set a date, December 31, 2010, by which we must leave. And this is exactly what the resolution seeks to do. Congress has to be mindful of our responsibilities under this Constitution, article I, section 8, to claim responsibility for the true casualties, which are now close to 1,000, to claim responsibility for the cost, which is approaching $250 billion and together with the Iraq war close to $1 trillion. And this at a great cost to our priorities here at home for housing, for job creation, for health care, for education; to claim responsibility for the casualties to innocent civilians, the human costs of the war. Congress must claim responsibility one way or another for challenging the corruption that my colleagues have talked about that has engulfed the Afghanistan administration. We must claim responsibility and understand exactly the role the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has in all of this. We must claim responsibility for debating the wisdom of the counterinsurgency strategies which apparently have failed and claim responsibility for the logistics of withdrawal.”