Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I agree very strongly with Chairman McKeon on one point. You can raise all manner of different questions, but there are no guarantees. If you are trying to figure out how to vote on this and you won't vote in favor until we are guaranteed nothing can go wrong, then save yourself the argument and just vote ``no.'' This is a very dangerous part of the world, and, in any part of the world, something can always go wrong. We cannot guarantee that there will be no bad outcomes. I think one of the things that has been lost in all this is that train and equip has been equated simply with Iraq and Afghanistan and has been deemed a failure. I really want to point out to people that the U.S. military--and the U.S. Government more broadly--has engaged in many very successful train-and-equip missions. In fact, this is the way out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the way out of committing over 100,000 U.S. troops to a battle to try to fundamentally change a country. You build partnerships, and those partners in those local areas are the ones that do the fighting and pursue the interests. In Somalia, we have a very significant problem with al-Shabaab. We have not, I believe, lost a U.S. life in that region. We have trained and equipped Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. They have helped take the fight to al-Shabaab in Somalia in a very successful manner.…”