Sylvester Turner: “the House will decide today not whether or not we will pursue the war, because the war is over and the settlement has…”

“the House will decide today not whether or not we will pursue the war, because the war is over and the settlement has been signed and the United States and NATO have prevailed. The question before the House today is whether, after winning the war, will we lose the peace? In this bill there is language that would cut off all funding for the peacekeeping operations 3 rac{1}{2} months from now. It is my view that we must send a very clear signal to the world community and to President Milosevic that we intend to keep the peace; that when the world community stood united, when our NATO allies stood united, when our forces prevailed in the 78 days of the bombing campaign, that this House of Representatives also will stand united in supporting those troops and supporting that peacekeeping effort. There is no question that we all believe in a strong military and we all believe that the supplemental appropriation, the emergency appropriation that we passed, was important to funding adequately the military. But to hide behind that smokescreen and say that we will oppose the Skelton amendment and keep the language in the bill that cuts off funding 3 rac{1}{2} months from now, just because we want to try to get another emergency appropriations bill passed sometime in the future, is, in my judgment, a wrong approach to a very serious issue.”