Jeff Duncan: “national defense is one of the most important and one of the most legitimate functions of our national government.…”

“national defense is one of the most important and one of the most legitimate functions of our national government. Serving in our Nation's Armed Forces is certainly one of the most honorable ways a person can serve this country. And because of our pride in being considered a peace-loving Nation, we changed the name of the War Department many years ago to the Department of Defense. Now, however, most of our leaders in both parties, people for whom I have great respect, seem to be eager to go to war against Iraq. We should not be eager to go to war against any country, and especially against one that has not attacked us or even threatened to attack us. We cannot use the terrible tragedies of September 11 to justify it, because Saudi Arabia had much more to do with those events than Iraq did, and we still consider Saudi Arabia to be one of our allies. We are already spending mega billions to increase our security. We do not need to go against our military traditions and spend billions more on an unnecessary war unless Iraq threatens to, or does, take some type of action against us. We do not need to turn the Department of Defense into the War Department once again.”