Mr. Reid: Mr. President, Senator Ensign and I hold, every Thursday, in a room right off the Chamber, in the Johnson Room, the LBJ Room, a breakfast where we have Nevadans come and visit with us.
Today it was a larger crowd than we usually have because school is out. Even if it were not a larger crowd, there were a lot more kids there.
One of the young people who was there is Anna Ressell. Anna is from Sparks, NV. She came to see me the day before yesterday with some other Nevada girls because she is a diabetic. She was there today with all of her family--a wonderful child. She is 13 years old.
During her lifetime, this young lady has had 20,000 finger pokes, 35,000 injections. She is a diabetic, I repeat. Think about that. When we go to the doctor and they draw blood or give you a shot, we always wince because it hurts. We try to have a backbone of steel, but it hurts. This young lady has had 20,000 finger pokes to determine what her blood sugar levels are and 35,000 injections.
That is why it is so sad, when we see this young girl with her family, that that hope has been taken away. She came here with these other girls to talk about the need for stem cell research.
The President, yesterday, in his message to the Senate, snuffed out hope for tens of thousands of people in Nevada, people such as Anna and many others suffering from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries--millions of Americans. Their hope was snuffed out with the President vetoing this bill. It is too bad.
I also think it is so important that I mention to everyone, as I said on the floor--I get up every morning and do my exercises and listen to public radio. I get the news at the top of the hour and the middle of the hour. I try to be up to date on what is going on in the world today that is not in the morning newspaper.
It was not on the morning news this morning, the tragic, sad news from Iraq, that 14 more of our soldiers were killed in the last 36 hours--14. I don't know if any are from Nevada.
Meanwhile, we see further evidence that the Iraqi leaders are frozen in an increasingly dangerous stalemate. The Vice President resigned. The fact is, our troops are caught in the middle of this civil war in faraway Iraq, trying to give Iraqi leaders the space and security to bring their country together. We have 160,000 to 180,000 troops there now, protecting the Shias, protecting the Sunnis, protecting the Kurds. They are all after our soldiers.
Unfortunately, Iraq's leaders continue to drag their feet, while our troops are getting killed; 14 more brave American soldiers.
But the problems aren't just in Iraq. The Middle East is engulfed in civil war in Lebanon, civil war in Iraq, civil war among the Palestinians. The Israelis do not know where to turn. Iran is thumbing its nose at us.
That is why we have fought so hard, as Democrats, and will continue to fight, to change the course in Iraq. We need a new mission, one that is aligned with our strategic interests. We need to begin redeploying our troops from Iraq so we can reduce our large combat footprint and extricate forces from this Civil War.
We need more than two Republicans to help us. We have had two, and I so appreciate that. They made it so we were able to pass a bill, send it to the President, and he vetoed it. We need more.
I have signaled to my colleagues that the Defense authorization bill will be coming up shortly. We intend to wage our battle on Iraq, changing the course of the war in Iraq.
