The Washington Post
The following is excerpted from an article in The Washington Post (August 28, 2007):
After serving two weeks of reserve duty in Iraq, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday called for continuation of the “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq and warned that any decision to mandate a withdrawal this year would undercut critical gains made in recent months.
Graham, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a longtime supporter of military deployment in Iraq, is the only member of the Senate to serve in Iraq.
“With all due respect to Senator Warner, the model he is suggesting — to put pressure [on the Iraqi government] by mandating troop withdrawal — is exactly the opposite of what we should do,” Graham said in an interview after returning from Iraq this past weekend. “I believe the pressure that will lead to reconciliation will not be from what an American politician thinks but what the Iraqi people think. And I’m confident that the Iraqi people have turned a corner.”
“The surge has produced better security. And if you mandated withdrawal now, it would undercut the progress we’ve made and embolden people who are on the ropes. Be patient. Continue to supply strongly economic, political and military support, and I believe . . . we’ll have a breakthrough in Baghdad,” he said.
A member of the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Graham worked primarily on detainee and rule-of-law issues in Iraq. When he was in a courtroom in Baghdad’s Red Zone — as some refer to the area outside the heavily fortified Green Zone — witnessing the trial of two Iraqi policemen charged with building an arms cache to aid a local Shiite militia, a car bomb exploded and two mortar shells landed nearby.
No other serving members of Congress have deployed in Iraq, according to congressional sources.
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