Leadership Quote by Ron Kind

“Unquestionably” is doing the heavy lifting here: it’s not a description so much as an attempted shutdown of debate. Ron Kind isn’t just acknowledging that Iraq has gotten worse; he’s marking a line around what any reasonable person is supposed to admit in public, a rhetorical move tailored to a post-2003 political environment where Iraq talk was a minefield of loyalty tests. The phrase gives him cover: it signals seriousness to skeptics of the war without sounding like a blanket denunciation that could be replayed as “cut and run.”

The construction is classic congressional calibration. “The mission in Iraq” keeps the focus on an official project, not the war’s moral logic or the administration’s sales pitch. “More dangerous and difficult” is deliberately managerial language: danger suggests troop risk and insurgent strength; difficulty suggests strategy, resources, and planning. It’s critique without indictment, an attempt to sound reality-based while leaving room for multiple policy endpoints (more troops, a change in strategy, or a timetable) depending on where the party and district winds blow.

Context matters: by the mid-2000s, optimism about a quick stabilization had collapsed under rising casualties, sectarian violence, and the erosion of public trust. Kind’s line is built for that moment, when politicians needed to acknowledge deterioration while avoiding the political liability of naming culprits. It’s an admission of failure, carefully stripped of blame.