Joe Courtney's Statement on the Resolution opposing the surge:

Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, today we are here, exactly 100 days after a historic watershed election in this country, in which the American people spoke loudly and clearly that they wanted a new Congress to rise to its constitutional duty and hold this administration accountable for its war policy in Iraq. The day I was sworn in as a new Member of Congress, I accepted this responsibility, and I rise today in opposition to the President's escalation of the war and in support of H. Con. Res. 63.

Make no mistake about the significance of what is happening this week. America's new Congress will go on record for the first time in opposition to the Bush administration's 4-year legacy of mistakes and misjudgments in Iraq. This will be in sharp contrast to 8 months ago when the prior Congress did exactly the opposite. That Congress lined up in lockstep with a war resolution written by and for the White House.

That resolution completely brushed over the misleading and manipulated intelligence that got us into this conflict, the strain of this war on our brave men and women in uniform, and the drain on our Nation's military readiness that is undercutting critical efforts in Afghanistan and our overall defense infrastructure. Instead of doing their constitutional duty, the 109th Congress instead just rubber-stamped the administration's rhetoric and failing policy.

Opponents of today's resolution are claiming that it will damage our troop's morale. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I believe the opposite is true.

Let us be very clear about where the 20,000 new troops will come from. President Bush cannot simply dial 911 and 20,000 fresh new troops appear. This escalation can only happen by extending the deployments of soldiers already in Iraq, beyond their promised commitments, or accelerating the arrival of preexisting rotations. Upon close examination, it is clear that the impact of this surge lands squarely on the backs of our men and women in uniform who have already borne an unfair burden.

As we debate this resolution, there are nearly 1,900 men and women from my State of Connecticut, including 962 from Connecticut's National Guard, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all honored our Nation with their service and sacrifice, and they have done all that has been asked of them and more, and their families have shown awe-inspiring strength in their absence.

Earlier this month, I was forwarded an e-mail from a constituent serving in Iraq which demonstrates the consequences of these unsustainable policies. In it he described how the morale in his unit fell when they found out that their tour was being unexpectedly extended another 4 months. He wrote:

``These guys have seen so much of the fighting here. To see the looks on these soldiers' faces was heartbreaking. A lot of these guys had plans made already with their loved ones, like weddings, trips, or family that traveled from far away to see them get off that

plane. There are children that were all excited, holding signs they made, waiting to see their fathers again only to have that shattered. How much more can soldiers like this take? These guys deserve the right to go home. They earned it.''
Letters like these demonstrate the real impact on our troops from the President's policy. And they are reinforced by the testimony I have heard at Armed Services. Over and over again, we have heard about the deterioration of our military readiness caused by overdeployment of our troops. Consider that today, as a result of the strain of the war, we currently have no active duty or Reserve brigades considered combat-ready in the Continental U.S., leaving our Nation dangerously unprepared and vulnerable if needed to respond to other global threats or domestic emergencies.

Despite the huge costs to our troops and our national defense, the President has opted to aggravate the holes in our defense with a plan to escalate the number of troops in Iraq. And for what?

Yesterday, I read the new classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. What I found in this report was the same as the unclassified version that has been reported in the press; that we have a deteriorating security situation in Iraq whose fundamental causes were identified as political, not military. This finding completely dovetails with the findings of the Iraq Study Group who came to the exact same conclusion.

Instead of absorbing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report and the National Intelligence Estimate and surging diplomacy and political solutions, the President instead has opted to escalate the war by sending 21,500 more troops into the middle of a violent sectarian conflict.

Where are the plans to equitably divide oil revenue or revisit the Iraqi Constitution which was left incomplete 2 years ago, or the push to create a real power-sharing arrangement between the Shia and the Sunni? Nowhere do we see any effort to get to the root causes of the violence. Instead, the Bush plan is more of the same, asking our brave troops to do the impossible, settling a sectarian conflict that goes back centuries in time.

President Bush has made his choice. Now it is Congress' turn as a coequal branch of government to make ours.

I firmly believe that the passage of this resolution will go down in history as the first stirrings of life from a Congress that has been in an Iraq stranglehold for 4 long years. It is an honor to be part of this history on behalf of one of the districts that had the courage to vote for change last November 100 days ago, and I will support resolution 63.