Mr. Speaker we are a blessed Nation. We have not suffered another attack on our soil since September 11 and we are grateful. We have killed or captured dozens of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Our military and intelligence forces are working both hard and smart.

When you say things like 'We have to wipe out the Taliban ' what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that you know America created anyway.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.