Excerpts from Harrison's National Security Speech

In what probably will be viewed as Stephen Harrison's best and most comprehensive policy speech of his campaign to date, today's speech on National Security really drives home to true price of what it means to the district to have Rep. Vito Fossella in office, and what it can look like with Stephen Harrison representing us instead. The speech is too detailed to repost in full, so I will post excerpts in segments. Without further ado, Stephen Harrison, the next Congressman from the thirteenth Congressional district of New York State;

"Our nation is threatened by an enemy as cruel as any we have ever faced. Nearly five years ago, our city was scarred by the worst attack ever to fall on American soil. Only two weeks ago the British cracked a terrorist plot to bomb multiple planes over the Atlantic. Looking back on the years between these two attacks, I must ask, what has our leadership done to make us safer? Three and one-half years after Pearl Harbor, Japan was defeated and the threat to our nation removed. So why is it, that almost five years after 9/11, we are still facing new attacks?
The only answer can be that our nation’s leaders have made tremendous mistakes in the war on terror. Throughout the last five years, armchair warriors in the White House and in Congress have wrapped themselves in an obsession with Iraq that has left all of us less safe. They refuse to listen to our allies, or even to their own generals. They push aside brave, experienced men, like Colin Powell, who questioned the wisdom of their course. Most unforgivably, they have chosen to set aside facts, and live in a fantasy world of their own making for political advantage."

"Despite years of war in Iraq, at a cost of tens of thousands of mostly innocent lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, at the price of our moral leadership of the world and the shattering of our close alliances we are no closer to defeating terrorism. We are no safer because of Iraq. Indeed we are less secure. There is no evidence that terrorists operated from Iraq before the war but there is much to suggest that terrorist organizations now do."

"Al Qaeda used Afghanistan as a training ground for terrorist operations on American shores and the Taliban protected them. I supported that war and I still do. We left Afghanistan too early to enter Iraq. As a result, the Bush administration left UBL free to this day and we see a reemergence of the Taliban. That’s unconscionable. Osama bin laden caused 9/11. For the sake of our nation, for the children and mothers and spouses of those who died that day, we, as a nation, must hunt down and capture or kill him. It is that simple. It must never be said that an attack on our land stood unavenged. Had a competent president been in charge, he would have listened to his generals on Afghanistan. We would have gone in with overwhelming force and we would have won and captured UBL."

"Iraq, regardless of whether you initially supported it or opposed it has been a colossal failure of leadership."

UPDATE
Part II
Part III