Here is Oklahoma’s Senator James Inhofe from earlier in the week:

While I am troubled the war has cost us, I believe it is absolutely necessary for us to be able to have this success. I can recall a year ago standing at this podium in the Senate quoting al-Qaida, saying Ramadi–that province in Iraq was going to become the terrorist capital of Iraq. When I was in Ramadi a matter of days ago, we found that there are new groups of people cooperating now that never cooperated before. I think some of the people in this body who were talking about surrender resolutions and all that–it got their attention. Maybe that performed a useful function because all of a sudden the people woke up. I learned something there too. All these political leaders we hear about, such as Prime Minister Maliki and Defense Minister Jasim and Dr. Rubiya, and some of the rest–I thought they were the ones who were the leaders. I think it is the clerics in the mosques. All of a sudden, they became concerned and, up until that time, we had been monitoring all of the procedures and the performances they have had on a weekly basis in the mosques. Eighty-five percent of them have been, up until December of this last year, anti-American messages. As of April, there haven’t been any anti-American messages. That shows that the clerics have gotten involved in this thing. In Tulsa, OK, we have neighborhood watch programs, where people get neighbors to watch and see what is going on. This is happening throughout Iraq, where they are spraying orange spray paint around IEDs that haven’t been detonated so our troops could disarm them. Those things have happened. I think the joint security stations have been very successful in Baghdad. Instead of our troops going out and coming back into the green zone at night, they stay and get to know and develop close, intimate relationships with the Iraqi security forces and their families. That has had a tremendously positive effect.
The future will be difficult in the fight against terrorism. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon. We have to remain vigilant, determined, and strong. I want our troops to come home as badly as anybody. When you think about the consequences of losing this thing, all it would take for these people who are crying out about their feelings and saying let’s get out of Iraq, all it would take is one successful terrorist attack similar to those that have been stopped through this joint effort. We would have to pay dearly.