I am committed to ending the war in Iraq. Now is the time for North Carolina to have a Senator who will stand by our troops and stand up to the Bush Administration.

When I am in the Senate, I will support using Congress’ power of the purse to cut off funding for the war.

Senator Elizabeth Dole has blindly backed the policies of the Bush-Cheney Administration which took us away from the hunt for Osama Bin-Laden and entangled us in Iraq’s religious civil war.

America has been in Iraq for five years – longer than we spent in either World War. American troops were sent into Iraq with inadequate planning and inadequate force levels.

This war has already cost nearly 4,000 American lives, more than 29,000 American wounded, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It will cost American taxpayers more than $3 trillion. It has cost our nation the trust and respect of nations around the world. We will bear the scars for generations.

Five years after committing the greatest military error in the history of America, the Bush Administration still does not have a strategy for ending our involvement in Iraq’s religious civil war, for rebuilding our overstretched military and caring for our troops who have been wounded in action.

It’s past time to begin planning for the sensible redeployment of our forces away from Iraq and back towards Osama Bin Laden and his followers.

We have a duty to our troops and their families to ensure they receive the medical care, education and career opportunities they have earned by putting their lives and their comfort at risk for us. We need to spend our tax dollars here at home on what matters most - providing job security for middle-class families, ensuring the health of our families, and leading the fight to protect the air, water and soil which sustains us.