Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the Afghanistan policy that is funded in the fiscal year 2012 Defense appropriations bill. I join the efforts of my colleagues in a variety of amendments designed to accelerate the end of the war in Afghanistan. For more than 9 years now, our troops have been executing the American mission in Afghanistan with bravery, dedication and extraordinary competence; but what started out as a ``quick war'' in 2001 to bring Osama bin Laden to justice and to dismantle al Qaeda in Afghanistan has turned into the longest war in United States history. The original mission has now been largely accomplished, and with bin Laden's death in Pakistan, this provides an opportunity to reexamine our ongoing mission in Afghanistan, which some estimates indicate is costing us in excess of $8 billion per month. We should no longer be sending billions of American taxpayer dollars to the Afghan people for their schools, their hospitals, their roads, bridges, and police at the expense of making those same investments in our own country, especially when the Afghanistan Government, under the leadership of President Karzai, has proven itself incredibly corrupt. In fact, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan the third most corrupt country in the world; and The New York Times recently reported about a road construction project, just one example in Afghanistan, funded by American taxpayers.…”