Michael Burgess: “Mr. Speaker, two Sunday mornings I was in Baghdad inside the Green Zone, an idyllic morning in the cradle of…”

“Mr. Speaker, two Sunday mornings I was in Baghdad inside the Green Zone, an idyllic morning in the cradle of civilization, if you will. But we had a wide-ranging discussion with Prime Minister Allawi about what lay ahead for Iraq. The Prime Minister said that what matters most is the kind of Iraq that we have at the end of this process. His feeling was that Iraq had its roots in ancient civilization. He now relished the opportunity for Iraq to spread the cause of democracy and liberty to other areas of the Middle East, which will make the cost and the risk of liberating Iraq worthwhile. Terrorism will continue after the elections because there will always be those who resist stability, but it will become more and more difficult to unravel the community. The Prime Minister became fairly philosophical and said he had spent the best part of his life fighting for freedom for his country, and now that freedom lay at the doorstep. He would not allow those individuals, meaning the Sunnis, to distract the process. He stated that if they cannot participate now, there will be a space open for them to participate in the future. To quote the Prime Minister, 'We don't want the radical forces to win now, nor do we want the outside forces from Syria or Iran to take over. I am a practical person. The Sunnis are changing.'”