Political Quotes

“I offer an amendment today, and I will not ask for a vote, that will increase the amount of money that we are providing to peacekeeping in this supplemental bill to an additional $68 million, and we would take that money from the Colombia military funds. Mr. Chairman, I think it is critical for this House to understand the importance of internationalizing our peacekeeping. The peacekeeping funds as distributed by this bill by the State Department are used to assist coalition partners and other cooperative front-line states to promote stabilization activities in postconflict Iraq. Frankly, we do not want all of the peacekeeping to be done by American military forces, or even the coalition forces currently fighting with us in Iraq. It is necessary, certainly, for us to have some initial burden; but we want to quickly move in terms of long-term security presence to peacekeepers from our allies in Europe, from other partners, from organizations of international stature, such as the United Nations, or more likely perhaps NATO; and we need to understand the need to move toward that. We need to establish the rule of law in Iraq as part of peacekeeping, and we will need an international team of legal experts and judges and prosecutors to form a transitional justice team and a civilian police team. Years of neglect at the United Nations have made that organization probably incapable of the kind of robust peacekeeping that we are going to need.”