Committee chairman John Warner (Republican-Virginia): "Do you have rising confidence in the ability of the Iraqi forces to continue to assume more and more responsibility for the military operations?"

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of US Central Command overseeing US forces in the Mideast: "I have confidence that the Iraqi army is up to the job, providing the Iraqi government shows the confidence in its own army and gives support to its own army to take the lead the way that they should."

Sen. Carl Levin (Democrat-Michigan): "Last week, the American people delivered a clear — indeed a dramatic — message to the administration, to the Congress and to the Iraqi government that 'stay the course' is not a strategy for success in Iraq. It was a message heard around the world. The American people don't accept the president's recent assessment that, quote, Absolutely, we're winning, close quote, in Iraq. Nor should we."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Republican-Georgia): "We've been at it four years now. We take kids straight out of high school. We train them for six months, a year — I'm not sure what the time period is now — and we send them to Iraq and ask them to fight. So what have we got to do to get the Iraqi army over that hump, General, to get them to the point to where they can take control? Because obviously it's taken us a lot longer than what we thought."

Sen. Edward Kennedy (Democrat-Massachusetts): "Those who have talked about some phased withdrawal immediately get accused of having either the words 'cut and run' or a 'blood bath' associated with their names or with their positions on it. ... When we hear talking about some kind of a phased withdrawal, that we're going to have a bloodbath, many think there's a bloodbath going on today."

Sen. John McCain (Republican-Arizona): "Was it encouraging when, in broad daylight yesterday or the day before, that people dressed in police uniforms are able to come in and kidnap 150 people and leave with them, go through checkpoints? General, it's not encouraging to us, it's not encouraging to those of us who have heard time after time that things are, quote, progressing well, that we're making progress, etc., because we're hearing from many other sources that that's not the case."

Sen. Hillary Clinton (Democrat-New York): "Hope is not a strategy. Hortatory talk about what the Iraqi government must do is getting old. I mean, I have heard over and over again: The government must do this, the Iraqi army must do that. Nobody disagrees with that. The brutal fact is, it is not happening."