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We need to continue our full support of the nascent Iraqi government by helping to rebuild their economic infrastructure and maintain security while training the Iraqi security forces.

The training and equipping of Iraqi security forces should be accelerated.

Leaving Iraq without military assistance during its transition, and before it is stable enough to ensure its own citizens' security, would pose a tremendous risk. We must complete our mission.

The new troops in Iraq need to be Iraqi troops.

And we need to maintain our foothold in the fight against terrorism and terrorist groups and respond to any degradation of Iraqi security or stability.

We must continue, however, to send a strong message of resolve to the people of Iraq, to our troops, to our coalition partners, and to the rest of the world that we, the United States of America, will stay the course and get the job done.

The Iraqis need help establishing a government. We have to provide them with security.

I was heartened to hear the President say that as we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels.

We have exhausted all of our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that... we have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.