Mike Conaway: “If you look at our history, if you look at the year 1776 and you study George Washington that year, he got up every day…”

“If you look at our history, if you look at the year 1776 and you study George Washington that year, he got up every day thinking that was the last day of the revolution. His army in many cases was in tatters, it was unpaid, it was underequipped. He could not have made the certification that the Democrats are demanding that this President make in order to send a single unit into combat; Washington could not have made that certification and he would have had to give up. He got up every day thinking, This is the last day of the deal. I am sure there were critics all over the place saying we are done, it is over, this grand experiment that turned into America, turned into 230 years of a beacon for liberty and democracy around the world, would have failed had he not stuck to this plan and stuck to the understanding that we could win this fight. And it was hard. Good men lost their lives every day, and it was hard. We are there at the same place today in Iraq. It is hard and good men and women risk their lives and some lose their lives every single day. I mourn with the families and I cry with them, just as you do, when somebody from the district is killed or maimed or injured. This has serious consequences to what we do. But failure in Iraq, a disaster that would be an immediate pullout, is simply unacceptable on every level.”