Political Quotes

“This was in a meeting in his office. He asked me, What kind of force are you talking about? I turned to General Austin and Ambassador Jeffries and I asked them, What is the number? Answer the Prime Minister's question. They said, We are still working on that. The Prime Minister looked at me and said something to the effect, Well, I don't know what I am supposed to be agreeing to. We come back to Washington. We go to the Vice President's house. We talk to Mr. Donilin, saying they need a number--sometime--and they said they would get back to us about the number. I am still waiting on that phone call. During my questioning of General Dempsey about the follow-on force, I asked him--General Austin recommended somewhere in the 18,000 to 20,000 range, the Pentagon got down to 10,000, and below that they felt very uncomfortable. I asked him directly, Did the number cascade down or did the number go down because the Iraqis said, That is too many Americans; we don't want that many Americans on our soil. He said, No, sir; the numbers kept cascading down because the White House kept changing the number. So I want the record to reflect that in a meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq, when he asked me how many troops we are talking about, we could not give him an answer.…”