Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, a Democrat from Des Moines says he needs to see the details of the president’s plans for Afghanistan before he can make a judgment on the issue. Boswell, a Vietnam veteran was asked about a possible troop surge in Afghanistan. Boswell says he hasn’t “been privy to what’s behind it.”
He says if the military is going in to help the armed forces protect themselves and to help turn on the water and electricity, then “that is probably needed.” Boswell says he is hesitant if the surge is for purely military purposes. “To go in there and try to win the land war, I would have to give that….a lot of second thought,” Boswell says. He says he’s seen the terrain in Afghanistan and “wouldn’t want us to take on that task.”
Boswell says he is also concerned about what is going on in Pakistan, but says there’s a lot of information to be released that he doesn’t know yet.
On another topic, Boswell says he was glad to see the House pass a healthcare bill. Boswell dismisses the criticism the bill has come under since it passed. “You can Monday morning quarterback it to death, we need a healthcare adjust, we really do. We’ve needed it for a long time and it’s not news to anybody that’s been paying attention,” Boswell says. Boswell says the system isn’t working now.
Boswell says: “We need to have affordable, available healthcare for everybody in this country and we don’t. We have the most expensive healthcare in the world where we rank in the 30’s on the effectiveness and we need to just face up to that, and we need to do things different.” Boswell says he looks forward to seeing the Senate’s healthcare bill, and then hopes they can get a good bill when the two sides sit down to work out the differences.