Political Quotes

“the first trip I took to Kuwait, it was right before the war started and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) had asked me to accompany her, because for her first foreign trip she wanted to go, even though she was not for the war resolution, she wanted to make sure that the troops understood she supported them wholeheartedly. The next trip I went on was to Iraq, and I found a number of shortages which a lot of people have talked about. But the shortages were not because the Committee on Appropriations did not put the money in; the shortages were because the bureaucrats back here saved the money for some other purpose. They did not want to spend this money. In the meantime, we had troops without inserts for their battle gear, we had troops without jammers, we had Bradleys without tracks, a lot of different problems. We called back from there, and we got the Defense Department moving. And this supplemental has every one of the shortages, the money for every one of the shortages in this bill. I am pleased to say that we have the companies working 24 hours a day to make sure that the troops have the type of equipment they need to protect their lives. I am hopeful that the President shifts some of these intelligence people, because what I have always learned is intelligence is probably the most important element in fighting a war; shifts the intelligence people from trying to find these weapons of mass destruction to trying to protect our troops.”