Patrick Leahy

The Afghan Civilian Assistance Program that you really have championed for so many years was the only program of a foreign government specifically helping victims of conflict.

One of the key ingredients that we are seeing from our lessons learned so far, if you will, is that the pace that we can make progress toward sustainability...

In 2003, at the urging of Senator Patrick J. Leahy, USAID's Afghanistan Transition Initiative was established.

The initiative of Senator Patrick J. Leahy to help Iraqi civilians injured in the conflict

When the United States invaded Iraq, we knew we would need a similar program there, especially as the civilian casualties began to add up and anger was felt toward the United States by the very people we were there to protect.

Today it is overwhelmingly civilians who suffer the casualties.

I want to thank all of you for doing this. I appreciate the testimony, and I am also going to a meeting with the other chairmen in the Senate this afternoon.

It was a mistake to not authorize such payments during the first 6 months--to not allow them at all would have been unconscionable and very damaging to U.S. military interests.

Well, I commend you both for doing it. At times, it must feel almost like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill.

I have been making notes as you and Mr. Chromy have been talking. I intend in the next few weeks to be in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I commend what we do, but I hope we put it in this perspective.

I know the Freeman family very, very well.

But what I need from you, and I make this as an open offer to you and to Lloyd, if there is support you are not getting--financially or anything else--from Congress, tell me. And I will work to get it.

How is Cambodia or Sierra Leone or Lebanon, Afghanistan--how do they eventually take over and do this themselves?

I want to thank the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and all the Leahy Fund partners of the past 20 years that have made it what it is and for what they have done to help.

I think your testimony here today will probably come to their attention, and you may be able to get the meeting. We will help you on that.

You look at some of the speeches of Secretary of Defense Gates. He has talked about how civilian casualties have been a major obstacle, for example, in winning the support of the Afghan people.

I think of Dr. Nadim Karam. I met him, and I assume that this is what you mean by the type of partner. He is a remarkable person, for his vision and his commitment.

To not respond, I think, goes to our conscience and our moral standing in the world.

You, Senator Leahy, have been the champion of for so many years is really critical.

Unfortunately, as we have discovered, this is no longer the textbook case that peace treaties are signed, armies march away, tanks withdraw, and all is peaceful again.

Well, thank you. Because as long as I am here in the Senate, I am not only going to remember that little boy in the field hospital in the jungle of Honduras, but I am also going to remember all of the other places I have visited around the…

Too many programs, as you know, are written in stone and nothing changes.

We talk about where the War Victims Fund has been used, and I think of Vietnam and President George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush, who was looking for a way to build confidence with Vietnam.

This program, also administered by USAID, has helped so many.