John Boehner: “my colleagues, the President was right to veto the bill that we have before us. And I believe that the House today will…”

“my colleagues, the President was right to veto the bill that we have before us. And I believe that the House today will sustain the President's veto because the bill that we have before us that is purportedly there to pay for our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and other issues, in my opinion, ties the hands of our generals and our troops on the ground and almost mandates failure in Iraq. I think it is time for us to work across the aisle to produce a clean bill that the President can sign into law to sustain our efforts in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and to make sure that at the end of the day we have victory. The fundamental question that we are all dealing with in this Chamber and elsewhere is, why is Iraq important? Why is winning in Iraq so important? In my view, and in others, al Qaeda has made Iraq the central front in their war with us. Those aren't my words, those are their words. They started this war when they attacked us all through the 1990s and when they attacked us in New York City on 9/11. And while we went to Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein and to help build a more stable, democratically-elected nation in that part of the world and bring more stability there, it has turned into much more than that. According to the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a nonprofit organization funded by a grant from the Homeland Security Department, Iraq today is home to 77 different terrorist organizations.…”