John Cornyn: “since we are going to be on the amendment of the Senator from Florida for a few minutes, I have a couple other thoughts…”

“since we are going to be on the amendment of the Senator from Florida for a few minutes, I have a couple other thoughts I would like to offer to our colleagues in response to those offered by the Democratic leader. First of all, I don't know why, after the Iraqi officials have disclaimed any intent whatsoever to offer amnesty to those who have killed an American soldier, we would gratuitously offer a sense-of-the- Senate amendment to condemn them for doing something they said they are not going to do, unless we are engaged more in gamesmanship than we are in working and passing serious legislation. The comment was made earlier that perhaps this is just a diversion. I thought we were going to have a serious debate about whether we were going to bring our troops back home and on what kind of timetable we were going to do that, whether it is some arbitrary timetable or, instead, whether it is based on conditions on the ground. I thought that was the kind of debate we were going to have today, not some sort of manufactured debate offering a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to divert public attention from an issue that does not exist about this amnesty that has been suggested which has been expressly disclaimed by the Iraqi leadership. My suggestion is that we move on to the serious work that the people of this country sent us here to do and not to engage in sideshows, which is clearly what this sense-of-the-Senate proposition is designed to do.”