Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, the gentleman from South Carolina talks about war criminal Putin. That makes me think he supports regime change in Russia, because that is what it would take to prosecute Vladimir Putin for war crimes. Now, I am not saying that he is not a war criminal. I am not saying anything he has done is just. It is not. The question is: Is that really the mission that we are trying to fund? The sequence is ready, aim, fire for a reason. It is not ready, fire, aim. It is not too late to pull back and do the rational thing here and commit to a mission so that we can be accountable, and we can hold this administration accountable, our military commanders accountable, and, frankly, our weak State Department accountable for actually accomplishing a mission. Hopefully, they succeed, and we can say: Well done. Mission accomplished. But they don't want to be accountable for the mission. That is why they worked so hard to oppose this rational standard that was always the cause. Post-Vietnam, we learned we commit to a mission, and we commit to an exit strategy. We abandon it at our peril. We are less free, less safe, and more burdened by debt because of it. We have to demand a mission. The Acting CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired. {time} 1600”