Political Quotes

“elections are currently underway in Iraq. It is very exciting. The election formally in Iraq itself will be Thursday, although in the United States those Iraqi citizens are voting. They are actually voting in Tennessee at one of those distant, remote locations, remote from Iraq. That is a powerful statement to the progress made in Iraq over the last 2\1/2\ years, that this is the third election in the last year. At the first election in January, about 8.5 million turned out; at the next election in mid-October, over 10 million people turned out; at the third election, we will have to wait and see, but it looks as though there will be record numbers of individuals voting in Iraq. Two-and-a-half years ago, we had a country that had no representative government whatsoever and had a tyrant, Saddam Hussein, oppressing the people there. This morning, several of us had the opportunity to talk, by teleconferencing, with our Ambassador in Iraq, as well as General Casey. They did review with us a number of the real advances that have been made. When you look at issues such as Iraqis who are currently participating, they cited several statistics. In August 2004, there were five Iraqi army battalions actually in the fight. There are currently 97 Iraqi battalions in the fight. In July 2004, there were no ready operational divisional headquarters. Today there are at least 7 operational divisional headquarters and 31 operational brigade headquarters.…”