John Cornyn: “to my knowledge, we are of one mind that we do want to leave Iraq. The question is, Under what conditions? I don't…”

“to my knowledge, we are of one mind that we do want to leave Iraq. The question is, Under what conditions? I don't believe Prime Minister Maliki certainly is on record as saying he wants us to leave at a time when his government would be rent asunder and Iraq would descend into sectarian war and perhaps a regional conflict. But the fact is, GEN David Petraeus, the general whom we confirmed unanimously just a short time ago, has recommended to the Commander in Chief a new strategy known as the surge, which was completed just last month, a few short weeks ago. Now he has said to give that surge an opportunity to do its job and he will come back and report to us in September. I think we ought to give that a reasonable chance. While the distinguished majority whip wants to talk about the Levin amendment, I think we will have plenty of time to talk about that during the course of the evening. The irony is, we are ready to vote on the Levin amendment at almost any time. But we are going to have a big political theater tonight.”