Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious, long-term, physical and mental health problems, due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.

The Bush Administration claims there is a Social Security crisis only to distract Americans from its serious mismanagement of the federal budget.

Mercury emissions will continue to harm the environment and to endanger the health of children and pregnant women, until this Administration puts public health before politics.

Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious, long-term, physical and mental health problems, due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.

Providing working Minnesotans with at least seven days of paid sick leave every year is the right thing to do to. It benefits our families and helps our businesses become more worker friendly and family friendly.

Its going to be a squeeze, but we have got to put our men and women in uniform ahead of everything else. We've got to be treating our reservists fairly before we move on to other procurements.

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too.

Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income.

The fine print in the President's Social Security proposal is that all present and future workers under age 55 will have their promised retirement benefits cut.

Idle time is the devil's play.

Much as soldiers come back, they've been in combat or the edge of it and suddenly that adjustment back to civilian life is a real challenge.

Several million people inside and outside Afghanistan are destitute and desperately in need of help.

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

We don't consider the battle has ended in Afghanistan... The battle has begun and its fires are picking up. These fires will reach the White House, because it is the center of injustice and tyranny.

There is a difference between a military mission and the aspiration for the long-term plans for the country. What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan, able to look after its own security so we can leave without the fear of it imploding... But let's be clear - it's not going to be perfect.

However, it does seem now that the international community, more importantly the powers that have influence, and, even more importantly, Afghanistan's neighbors realize that it is high time that they work together, and not against one another.

In Afghanistan, this is the problem, because everybody holds a piece of that mirror, and they all look at it and claim that they hold the entire truth.

A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit.

Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let's say, over western Europe. You just can't use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan.

Last year I traveled to the Middle East to visit with troops in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

I'm also working with Mrs. Bush on some education projects in Afghanistan, so I get to see her a great deal.

I suggested that we had experience in helping other countries build their military forces, and we would be willing and happy to do the same for Afghanistan, together with the United States.

We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that, rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?

In fact, if you look upon the situation today, there is great division in the world and we have failed to capitalize on that unity to finish the job in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda.

Canada is preparing to play a major role in the continued stability and security of Afghanistan through ISAF.

The men and women of Afghanistan are building a nation that is free, and proud, and fighting terror - and America is honored to be their friend.

No one talked about the fact that in this year under the Obama administration you've seen the highest casualties in Afghanistan. And the fact that it took him almost 90 days to figure out what his strategy is going to be was absolutely appalling.

If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq.

Clinton has more important things to worry about. He not only risks being destroyed historically, like Afghanistan's Buddha statues; he also could end up going to jail.

As for the United States' future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors - the Soviets and, before them, the British.

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Gen. Tommy Franks told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq - a war more than a year away.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs.

Romania will continue to fulfil its obligations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.

We can be proud of our record as an international beacon of liberty. From fostering democracies in Eastern Europe to the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been true to that calling and helped spread freedom to oppressed peoples everywhere.

The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It's a dirty business to produce such a horrible device.

India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there.

I am now concerned with women's issues in a different way: women from Afghanistan, from Cambodia.

I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth.

Another part of the global war on terrorism that Canada and the United States are working on together is in helping failed states, states like Afghanistan, where people have no voice.

The war being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq is bringing about a fundamental change to the environment that has given rise and power to the extremists who export terrorism.

It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan.

There's no doubt that it's still a dangerous place, Afghanistan. The fortunate thing is that the United States was helping to provide security for Chairman Karzai. And it shows that the United States is committed to that regime.

But I knew that what had happened was an eye-opener not only to the United States but also to Pakistan, who realized that after what has happened on the 11th of September, it was simply impossible to continue to play those games in Afghanistan.

I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad... until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.

We're in danger of breaking our army and preventing our national leaders from having the flexibility to confront not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but crises around the globe.

America has survived and grown stronger through September 11th and subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq and those who seek to do us harm. We have faced - and met - tremendous challenges ramping up a public health and safety system to protect Americans from future threats.