Patrick Leahy: “If I may respond on that, as I have stated over and over again--and I will state it again for my good friend, who I…”

“If I may respond on that, as I have stated over and over again--and I will state it again for my good friend, who I refer to as ``my Senator'' when I am away from Vermont because I live part of the time in his beautiful Commonwealth. We are not asking the military to not do the job they do, and do well; we are not asking that they stop providing security or to not continue to hunt for Saddam Hussein or those connected with him. What I am saying is that they ought to be freed up to do that job. But they should not be doing the nation building the administration wants, which is our President's vision for Iraq. Let's give that job back to the people who are trained to do it. I know the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee does not want to see our military there forever as an occupying force. He and I totally agree on that. He and I totally agree that our military is the finest in the world, and they have done extraordinarily well there. I think we have them stretched pretty thin in a lot of areas. I am saying, let the military do the military work; let the State Department do the foreign aid work; and if the State Department is unwilling to do the kinds of things they are trained for, which they tell us year after year they need hundreds of millions of dollars more to do, then maybe we don't need them.”