This is a transcript from Congressman John Kline (Mn 2) during a conference call held yesterday that I was a part of.
Please excuse any punctuation or spelling errors. Transcribing sucks, or rather, I suck at it.

We are making progress in Iraq. The Iraqi Security forces are doing a good job. our forces are by doing a fabulous job. Their moral is high. They are dedicated to their Mission and that we simply must complete the mission. The Democrats notion of sort of having a wish instead of a plan, except for John Murtha who has a plan to cut in run, apparently now supported by minority leader Pelosi.

The Bush administration and vast majority of Congress understand that failure is not an option in Iraq. Let me just give a brief anecdote which I think captures the mood out there.

Some of you may know that my son serves in the United States Army. He’s in Iraq as we speak just north of Tikrit as a Black hawk helicopter pilot. He’s the executive officer of a blackout battalion.

In August Vicki and I travel down to Fort Campbell, Kentucky Where the 101st airborne Division is located. We went down there of course to visit the grand kids. As part of that visit I went with my son to Fort Campbell so I could see the progress of the 101st Division preparing to go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of my son’s colleagues.

We sat down in a room of maybe 35 or 40 soldiers, mid-level officers, and enlisted soldiers, battalion commander. We chatted about a wide variety of subjects.

Now we’ll condense it down to this perception that I had was that their morale was extremely high. They were very excited to go to Iraq, they were very eager to go to Iraq. The one concern they raised, the one question that they raised, we fall this negative reporting Will we continue to have the support of American people?

And I assured them at that time that they would continue to have the support of American people. And clearly a great majority of the members of Congress understand that failure in a Iraq is not an option! The ranking democrat on the Armed Services Committee Mike Skelton said that repeatedly in the open hearing.

So I assured them that despite the drumbeat of bad news, that sometimes comes pouring out of Iraq, that they would have the support of the American people. We would not send them over there at no end. We could not betray their commitment and sacrifice.

So I was curious to see that after 101st had been in Iraq for couple months what they were feeling. I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago when I was in Iraq to have the great pleasure of spending a couple of hours with my son and talking with some the same soldiers that I had a chance to visit with back in August.

And I can tell you again that their morale is high. They are a confident of their abilities and are proud of their accomplishments.

From soldiers and marines that I’ve talked to both days when I was Iraq that the Iraqi security forces are doing well and our forces are having increasing confidence in them.

I arrived the day after our debate on the floor about the resolution to withdraw our troops from Iraq. So I spent a fair amount of my time in the two days reassuring Iraqi allies, and soldiers, and our marines that there was no support in Congress for immediate withdrawal. 403 to 3 sort of underscored that.

But it was necessary to keep that reassuring because eventually if you were sitting over lunch, or dinner, or a more formal setting, the issue would come up.

Rather than me just going on and on, I’ll close by saying: two days I spent in Iraq, including spending the night in Baghdad, I never heard a shot fired, I never heard an explosion. You would think that by watching television and news here, that there was a raging gun battle in going on in front of all Iraqis all the time. That was simply not the case! I was also their last January and I can report the same thing to. Two days in Iraq and not a shot fired.

That is not to say that there isn’t fighting going on, there certainly is, but the perception that there’s a raging gun battle going throughout Iraq, that some people have by watching the news here, is simply not true. The Iraqi security forces are indeed making progress. We visited was some of them. Talked with their officers, talked with their troops. They’re very proud of themselves.

There are units that are blended Sunni, Arab, Kurd, and Shia. They are proud of what they’re doing, and our troops have confidence.

So (?) progress on behalf of Iraqi security forces. They are proud of what they’re doing. And our forces the soldiers and marines, principally, that we visited with, they are glad to be their and they are proud of what they’re proud of what they are doing. And they are confident in their mission. We should be reassuring them that we not only love them, but we’re not going to betray them, By yanking them out of there before the mission is over!

This is only about half of what I have. I will try to do the rest. There are some questions that a couple other bloggers got to ask, plus Congressman Jack Kingston has yet to join us on the call. I’ll see how much I can get done this weekend.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 10:14 pm and is filed under MN Campaigns, War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.