[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 8554]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   SADNESS OVER COMMENTS ON IRAQ WAR

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, this morning it is with a sense of profound 
sadness that I address the House of Representatives, and usually it is 
not so. I cherish the time that I have been able to spend here 
representing my District.
  Mr. Speaker, my son is a member of the Air National Guard of the 
136th Wing out of the old Carswell Air Force Base in Dallas. He is a 
staff sergeant, but I picked up the paper this morning like so many of 
my friends, and we see that the leaders on the other side have 
proclaimed the war unwinnable, and I think of all of the brave young 
men and women that I saw when I was in Iraq two times in the past year, 
and I cannot help but feel a profound sense of sadness that they feel 
that their leaders have abandoned them.
  Now, we are all outraged and saddened by the photos of mistreatment 
of the Iraqi prisoners we have seen on our television screens. The 
abusers will be punished. The commanding officers will likely have 
their careers in ruins, but I just want to caution the leaders on the 
other side, indeed the candidates who are running for the highest 
office in this land, that this response is reminiscent of the response 
that a candidate named Kerry, 30 years ago had before the Senate 
committee where he condemned all of our troops in Vietnam.
  This is not the case of our brave men and women over in Iraq today.

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