You can't just drop the 82nd Airborne into Baghdad and it will all be over.

If we have to continue to live under sequestration, it will have a maximum impact on our ability to fulfill the president's strategic guidance. We can't do it all. It's as simple as that, with the limitations of the budget as severe as they are. These deep, abrupt cuts have forced us to make decisions that are not in the interest of America.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

This current government in Iraq has never fulfilled the commitments it made to form a unity government with the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shia. We have worked hard with them within the confines of our ability to do that but we can't dictate to them.

The Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and elsewhere, and should not be demonized or condemned for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge and criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democratic, nor what this country has stood for over 200 years.

If America is to succeed in responding to these 21st Century challenges, our political system cannot continue to bog down in the mire of partisan gamesmanship.

I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president.