Political Quotes

“I like that suggestion from my friend from Washington State, that we need to convey to Iraqis that we do not intend to stay there. A second suggestion I would like to make is we need to convey to the world community that this is their problem, not just an American problem. Stability in the Middle East, access to the resources, the oil resources in the Middle East, is important for so many countries, not just us. But the fact is that this President and this administration really have stuck their thumbs in the eyes, figuratively speaking, of so many of our traditional allies. The fact is that we had this administration announcing right off that the work to do the reconstruction in Iraq would only go to certain companies, Halliburton being the primary one, and no other countries could or would be involved. So we basically said we do not want you involved, because, as was said earlier, we thought it was going to be easy sailing. We would go in there, they would love us, democracy would bloom, we would have access to oil, and we did not want the help of other countries. Now it has gotten pretty tough, and we find more and more of even the coalition partners pulling back, pulling away. Some countries have pulled out entirely. Even Great Britain, they are talking about the possibility of reducing their force in Iraq by one-third. So I believe we do need to internationalize the effort in Iraq. We need to go to the UN, we need to go to NATO.”