House Hearing With Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus

"We must begin by considering the overall security of this nation. It's our responsibility here in Congress under the Constitution to ensure that the United States military can deter and if needed prevail anywhere our interests are threatened. Iraq is an important piece of the overall equation but it is only a piece. There are very real trade-offs when you send one hundred and sixty thousand of our men and women in uniform to Iraq. Those troops in Iraq are not available for other missions, they are not available to go into Afghanistan to pursue Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders who ordered an attack on us one day short of the six years ago."

"We can not take ANY of this Administration's assertions on Iraq at face value anymore, and no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility. This is not a knock on you, General Petraeus, or on you, Ambassador Crocker. But the fact remains, gentlemen, that the Administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two Committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say ... I don't buy it. And neither does the independent Government Accountability Office or the Commission headed by General Jones. Both recently issued deeply pessimistic reports... In the last few days, General Petraeus, media have reported that you are prepared to support a slow drawdown of our forces in Iraq -- beginning with a brigade or two, perhaps at the end of this year. This clearly is nowhere near enough... It is time to go -- and to go now."