Your week in political quotes

(LIN) – In a televised speech at an Army base in North Carolina, the president announced that U.S. forces have ended their nearly nine-year war in Iraq. This is your week in quotes.

"The war in Iraq will soon belong to history, and your service belongs to the ages. " -- President Barack Obama at Fort Bragg, N.C., saluting troops returning from Iraq, asserting that the nearly nine-year conflict was ending honorably.

" But there's something else that we owe you. As Americans, we have a responsibility to learn from your service. I'm thinking of an example - Lieutenant Alvin Shell, who was based here at Fort Bragg.  A few years ago, on a supply route outside Baghdad, he and his team were engulfed by flames from an RPG attack. Covered with gasoline, he ran into the fire to help his fellow soldiers, and then led them two miles back to Camp Victory where he finally collapsed, covered with burns. When they told him he was a hero, Alvin disagreed. ‘I'm not a hero,’ he said. ‘A hero is a sandwich. I'm a paratrooper. ’ "-- Obama, at Fort Bragg.

"All I will say is that for three years the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure. I imagine that this irony was not lost on a few of our troops at Fort Bragg today, most of whom deployed and fought as part of the surge. " -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"We're not here to win a popularity contest. No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life." -- NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman, acknowledging the recommendation to all states a ban on cellphone use while driving would be unpopular with many people.

"One of the things that I think people recognize in Washington is that people go there to serve the people and then they stay there to serve themselves." -- GOP presidential hopeful and former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., suggesting that fellow candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., was an ultimate insider who leveraged his position as speaker to line his pockets when he left office.

"This case is not just about Arizona. It's about every state grappling with the costs of illegal immigration." -- Gov. Jan Brewer, R-Ariz., after the Supreme Court stepped into the fight Monday over a tough Arizona law that requires local police to help enforce federal immigration laws.

"It offends the hell out of me that we would even consider that…These men and women have really gone out of our way to protect all of us. " -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., indicating Republican lawmakers will introduce legislation to prevent $600 billion in spending cuts to the Defense Dept. The cuts were a result of the congressional supercommittee’s failure to agree on other cuts by a deadline.

"Women account for more than 50 percent of the global population and hold less than 20 percent of all parliamentary seats across the globe. And, of course, I am embarrassed to say, in the United States, that percentage is even lower. Women make up only 17 percent of our own Congress and only a quarter of the seats in all of our state legislatures. " -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at the Inaugural Women in Public Service Colloquium at the State Department.

"Christmas is 10 days away. The president and Democrats in Congress have been very clear. We're not going home until we enact a payroll tax cut for America's working families and extending unemployment insurance for millions of Americans. "  -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"I never gave any instruction to anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds." -- Former Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., at a hearing to determine how his company, MF Global, cannot account for a loss of $1.2 billion in customer money. MF Global declared bankruptcy this fall.

"Funds don't simply disappear. Someone took action, whether legal or illegal, to move that money. And the effect of that decision is being felt across the countryside." -- Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., questioning Corzine.