Jack Reed: “I commend Senator Warner, Senator Nelson, Senator Levin and others who have worked so hard on this resolution. I do…”

“I commend Senator Warner, Senator Nelson, Senator Levin and others who have worked so hard on this resolution. I do believe, like my colleagues, that this measure and an alternative measure deserve an up-or-down vote by the Senate. That is what the American people want, and that is what they should receive. We embarked on this effort in Iraq more than 4 years ago. From the very beginning I thought this was not a response to an imminent threat to the United States or even to the region. It was based upon highly speculative and, it turns out in many cases, flat wrong intelligence. It represents, in my view, a flawed strategy because the approach the President has taken in Iraq fails to recognize that the major regional threat was not Iraq but Iran and failed to recognize the huge amounts of resources that will be necessary to successfully occupy and stabilize a country the size of Iraq with the cultural and historical issues that are inherent in that country. The strategy, as I said, I think was flawed. Strategy, to me, means having a clear objective and putting forth the resources necessary to achieve that objective. The objective in Iraq shifted from the WMD allegations, to terrorist connections allegations, to creating a transformative oasis of democracy and free enterprise in a country that has not seen that in many years. And the resources were never adequate for the task. One of the most important resources in a strategy is public support.…”