Political Quotes

“if the gentleman will yield, I just think it is appropriate at this point as the gentleman is talking about the Balkans and the potential conflict there that here we have an administration that is downsizing the military dramatically, and we were going to have a discussion about further downsizing further even beyond what President Clinton is asking for which I think would be outrageous, but the same administration is in fact deploying our troops to more of the hot spots around the world, whether it be Macedonia or surrounding Haiti or the promise of 25,000 troops into the Balkans or whether it is the troops that we have over in Somalia that we withdrew and then put back in again because we were embarrassed because we had taken them out too quickly; we have troops literally in more places today than at any point in time in recent years and at a time when we are cutting back the military. What does this mean? When I was in Somalia 1 year ago almost to this very day in Mogadishu with the appropriators, we talked to some young Marines at a base camp in Baidoa, and they said, ``You know, Congressman, our biggest concern is that for three of the last four holiday seasons we have been deployed. We go from one operation to another. We have no time to regroup. We have no time to go see our families. We have no time to get ourselves together.”