David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, every Member of this House supports whatever is necessary to give our troops every dollar and every piece…”

“Mr. Chairman, every Member of this House supports whatever is necessary to give our troops every dollar and every piece of equipment they need to come through this war successfully and unscathed, we hope; but there are other duties which this Congress has as well, and I believe that we are missing a huge opportunity to strengthen our defenses here at home. I really believe that the people who died in the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania and the Twin Towers in New York were the last casualties from the 1991 war against Iraq. It was that war to which bin Laden responded, and it was because of his anger at the West for stationing troops on Saudi territory that he lashed out in his vicious attack on this country. I think we have to recognize that there will be future bin Ladens, and if we are going to have an ultimately successful result from our attack on Iraq, we need to make certain that we do a much better job the next 10 years in battening down the hatches against terrorism than we did the past 10 years. That is why we wanted to offer this amendment today; and in my view, we will pay a price for not being able to provide these additional protections.”