Michael Burgess: “Today, on Capitol Hill, in our Subcommittee on Health Policy, we were joined by about 25 women from the country of Iraq.…”

“Today, on Capitol Hill, in our Subcommittee on Health Policy, we were joined by about 25 women from the country of Iraq. They had been here for about a week studying various Federal agencies and how democracy works and how the business of our government runs. And, in fact, after our policy meeting today, several of the Members of Congress had one of the Iraqi women go with them for the remainder of the morning. I took one of the participants to the Committee on Science, where we were talking about space exploration. It was kind of ironic, because we were talking about the bravery involved in space exploration, but these women showed great bravery in coming to this country to learn about democracy, to learn how disparate peoples work together to gain a common good. They took a big chance in doing that. In fact, some of them were too concerned to come out of the briefing room, where there were television cameras, because they did not want their faces filmed, for fear that they or their families would suffer back in Iraq. Surely these women showed a lot of bravery by coming here today and they shared a lot of stories with us.”