Michael Burgess: “I can remember sitting down to watch the national evening news back in Texas and turning on the television and hearing a…”

“I can remember sitting down to watch the national evening news back in Texas and turning on the television and hearing a news anchor that everyone is familiar with. His lead story was Iraq, and he started talking again about the hopelessness and the quagmire and we are just barely holding on and it looks like an operation gone terribly wrong. And I had to ask myself, did I get off the wrong plane? Did I perhaps land in a parallel dimension? Because I did not recognize the country that he was talking about. I did not recognize the country that I had just left hours before. I think General James Conway in Babylon, the ancient city of Babylon, stationed there with the First Marine Expeditionary Force, they were one of the first groups into Iraq, his description of what is going on in that country is what stuck with me. He described Iraq as a vivid success story. He also went on to say that Iraqis are not concerned that we are going to stay too long. Madam Speaker, they are most concerned that we are going to leave too soon.”