Political Quotes

“Well, as someone said, it does not make sense for us to be opening firehouses in Iraq while we are closing firehouses and laying off firefighters in this country. But the fact is this $87 billion vote is being used in the most political way, and there have been accusations that somehow when Senator Kerry opposed that, that he was opposing body armor for our troops. I would just like to point out something that I have shared with my friends here in this Chamber before. The war started in March of 2003. We did not have that vote on the $87 billion until months after the war started. Our troops were initially sent into battle without body armor. And that was a decision made by Secretary Rumsfeld and ultimately the responsibility of the President as the Commander in Chief. We sent our troops into battle without body armor. Now, that is a fact that cannot be disputed. And it took the Pentagon one full year, from March of 2003 to March of 2004, to provide me with a letter stating that finally, after a full year, our troops had been equipped with body armor. I questioned how many of our troops were unnecessarily injured or wounded or how many lost their lives simply because this administration sent them into combat without body armor. That was not a money problem; it was a planning problem. And the letters that I received from Secretary Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, verified that it was a supply problem.”