Tim Ryan: “Sixty to 65 percent of Iraqis believe it is okay to kill Americans, to shoot at Americans. We are in the middle of a…”

“Sixty to 65 percent of Iraqis believe it is okay to kill Americans, to shoot at Americans. We are in the middle of a civil war and we need to get ourselves out of it, not get ourselves further into it. So these hearings are an important component of that, to try to pull ourselves out of this situation that President Bush has gotten us into. I say that because--for several reasons. One is, some people say well, if you have an end date, then they are just going to sit back and wait until we leave. The problem with that theory is if we say we are going to stay forever, then they are never going to do their share, and the problem has been the Iraqi soldiers won't get trained, the problem is we can't get a political solution because everyone thinks we are just going to stay there and keep the situation intact. They need a goal, and the goal is, in our supplemental bill, if you do not have improvement in some of the benchmarks we have in there, political and military, if you don't have improvement by July, we are getting out. If you are showing some progress, we will give you until the end of the year, until the fall. And if you haven't met the goals by then, then we are out. You have got to meet your obligations. Believe me, I didn't support this war from the get-go, and it kills me, it kills me, that we have got to spend $100 billion to get us out of a situation. That kills me.”