Peter Welch: “First, why is this an emergency? It is an emergency because the administration has never funded this war on the books.…”

“First, why is this an emergency? It is an emergency because the administration has never funded this war on the books. The people who will pay for this are the sons and the daughters of the men and women in the military who are now fighting it. That is wrong and irresponsible. Number 2, the military has done its job. They were asked to get rid of Saddam. He's gone. Find weapons of mass destruction. They don't exist. And allow Iraq to have democratic elections. They have had three. Third point, the President says ``no'' to timetables. Of course we must have timetables. How else to hold the Iraqi politicians responsible? They have to have an oil law. They have to renounce sectarianism in the security force. And the only way that we are going to stop asking our military and our taxpayers to referee a civil war and to finance it is by having the President of the United States do what he must do and say we want accountability from the Iraqi political leadership.”