US Senate and House Democrat leaders send a letter to President Bush

In a letter that contained very scathing views on the Presidents handling of the War in Iraq, both Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House) and Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader) spelled out their disapproval over the planned surge in US troops in Iraq. It has been reported that this is one of the things that President Bush’s new plan contains and he is expected to tell the American people about the plan sometime this week.

Even though the whole plan hasn’t officially been finalized, it has been leaked to the press that Bush plans to increase the number of US combat troops in Iraq by 20,000 in what is being called a “surge” in troop strength to help quell the amount of sectarian violence.

The letter is meant to push the President into reconsidering the additional troops, because they anticipate that if we increase the number of soldiers on the ground it will only increase the number of US deaths and not reduce the amount of violence.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this as a strong enough statement to the President and in fact I think Congress should threaten to withhold new funding for the war in Iraq to force the President to bring our troops home, now.