Burgess Owens: “we are all celebrating Iraq's election, and I certainly join in the celebration. But I hope we realize that the great…”

“we are all celebrating Iraq's election, and I certainly join in the celebration. But I hope we realize that the great slogan that was almost universal, every candidate, every party says, Vote and the Americans will go home soon; the more you vote, the faster we will get the occupying troops out. I think we should understand that. We have a problem here with the trust of the Iraqi people. The problem is, who will gain the trust of the Iraqi people. Will we be able to gain that trust by behaving in a certain way, not just speaking and talking about guaranteeing liberty and freedom, but also justice? Will we be able to gain the trust before the outside forces of bin Laden? Time is on bin Laden's side. The longer we wait, the longer we hesitate, the longer we occupy Iraq and stay there, the more he will gather in new forces and recruit new people to come in. So we don't have an infinite amount of time. We should prepare an exit strategy and move on that exit strategy immediately. The problem is, how do you gain the trust of the people of Iraq in order to guarantee that the insurgents will have no support among the people. The less support the insurgents have among the people, the more secure Iraq will become. Step one in any successful departure from Iraq, and I think we can have a successful end to this occupation, step one in that successful end to the occupation would be to put a discussion of oil on the table.”