There is no one who wants to put an end to terrorism more than I do.  That is why I supported our President when he chose to send U.S. military forces to Afghanistan to go after those who attacked our nation on 9-11.        

I met with the President at his invitation in the White House on September 26, 2002, to hear his case for a preemptive strike in Iraq. I kept my notes from that important meeting and this is what the President told me: he said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; he said that Saddam Hussein trains terrorists on weapons of mass destruction; and he said that if military force is used it would be fierce, swift and tough. We now know that none of that information was accurate.

Had I known that the information the President shared with me was not accurate, I would have never given him the authority to use force in Iraq.  At worst, the President misled us and at best our intelligence failed us.

There is not a more difficult decision Members of Congress must make than whether to send our brave men and women in uniform into harm’s way. And when we are asked to make those decisions, we must know that our intelligence is correct.

Let me be clear on one very important point - I strongly believe that as long as we have troops in harms way we must support them. It is my duty as a U.S. Congressman to demand accountability from this Administration – accountability for the decisions that are being made in Iraq, accountability for how these decisions are carried out, and accountability for how our hard-working taxpayers’ money is being spent.     

Sending 21,000 new troops into Iraq is not a new direction. It is simply an escalation of the war. Currently, there are 227,000 American troops deployed to the region and I give these troops my full support. The way we support them is to change our course in Iraq.  I am not advocating that we leave Iraq tonight. But we must begin to accelerate the training of the Iraqi Army and police force and replace American soldiers on the front lines of this war with Iraqi’s.

We now find ourselves in the midst of a civil war fueled by sectarian violence.  We are deeply embroiled in this war with no clear strategy for an end.   This not what I voted for four years ago, and it is not what the American people had in mind either. We can no longer tolerate more of the same and we must demand from this President – our Commander in Chief -- a new strategy and a new direction in Iraq.