Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as I speak today Europe, for the first time in almost 80 years, is faced with the threat of a major invasion. A large nation threatens a smaller, less powerful neighbor, surrounding it on three sides with well over 100,000 troops as well as tanks and artillery. My colleagues, as we have painfully learned, wars have unintended consequences. They rarely turn out the way the planners and experts tell us they will. Just ask the officials who provided rosy scenarios for the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, only to be proven horribly wrong. Just ask the mothers of the soldiers who were killed or wounded in action during those wars. Just ask the families of the millions of civilians who became collateral damage in those wars. The war in Vietnam cost us 59,000 American deaths and many others who came home wounded in body and spirit. The casualties in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are almost incalculable, but they were in the millions. In Afghanistan, what began as a response to the horrific attack against us on 9-11-2001 eventually became a 20-year war, costing us $2 trillion and over 3,500 Americans who were killed, not to mention tens of thousands of Afghan civilians. George W. Bush claimed in 2003 that the United States had ``put the Taliban out of business forever.'' Well, not quite the case--the Taliban is in power today.…”