On the recordJuly 27, 2010
In closing, I want to thank the gentlelady from Florida for her commitment to this debate and for her passion to make sure American foreign policy always receives a very strong and ringing endorsement. I want to thank the gentleman from New York and also the gentleman from California for this. And I want to thank Mr. Paul, who has been a very powerful voice in this country to talk about the limitations of power. People have been asking why this resolution and why now? Because I strongly believe that we should nip in the bud an expansion of U.S. ground presence in Pakistan. We need to do this to keep our troops out of harm's way. Now, it's no secret the administration ordered hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan just this year resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians. It's not been widely discussed until today that we had over 120 U.S. military in the country 'training' Pakistani security forces. We have to appreciate the Wall Street Journal's reporting on this where they covered the fact that there was an increase in the U.S. forces in Pakistan who are there to train Pakistan military forces, and it's a force comprised of the tribal regions. I want to say that the recent reports released by WikiLeaks and published in The New York Times and the Guardian on the war in Afghanistan confirmed to us what we already know: that 9 years on we're still uncovering an abundance of information that our presence in Afghanistan is counterproductive.





