Washington D.C. – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the floor about today’s vote. The following is the text of his speech as prepared for delivery.



Five weeks ago, President Bush stood before the American people and acknowledged the lack of progress in Iraq. He outlined a new military strategy that was devised after consultation with military commanders, national security leaders, and members of Congress from both parties. He told us he had committed more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq to clear and secure the city of Baghdad and to protect its population. As we meet here today, the first of five waves of soldiers are carrying out this plan on the streets and in the alleys of Baghdad. The second is preparing to leave.



These reinforcements have already given us reasons for hope. Soon after the President’s announcement, US-Iraqi forces began to rout key elements of the Mahdi Army. The militia’s leader fled his stronghold. And this week, US-Iraqi forces have conducted sweeps through once-violent Sunni neighborhoods with little resistance. It is too early to say whether the surge will achieve its objective. But President Bush and Gen. Petraeus asked us to give this plan a chance to work — to support our troops in the field, and those on their way — and, until now, we have done just that.



Today we are being asked to do something entirely different. The majority party in the Senate wants to vote on a resolution that condemns the President’s plan and which “disagrees” with Gen. Petraeus, who said before he left for Iraq that additional troops are an “essential” part of achieving our goal. They are doing this three weeks after voting, without dissent, to send Gen. Petraeus on this mission. And they are doing it in the form of a non-binding resolution that will have no practical effect on our conduct of the war.



Americans have a right to demand why the U.S. Senate has not yet taken a clear stand on what most of us believe to be our last, best chance at success. So let us be clear at the outset of this debate about what’s going on today, about what Republicans are fighting for today. Republicans are fighting for the right of the American People to know where we stand. If you support this war, say so. If you don’t, say so. But you cannot say you are registering a vote in favor of our troops unless you pledge to support them with the funds they will need to carry their mission out.



Yet this is precisely what the Democratic majority would have us do today. They demand that Republicans cast a vote in favor of a nonsensical proposition that says: “We disapprove of the President’s plan to deploy more troops to Iraq, but we support the members of the Armed Forces who are serving there.” A vote in support of the troops that is silent on the question of funds is an attempt to have it both ways. So Republicans are asking for an honest and open debate. And we are being blocked at every turn.



The Majority Party in the House has a stronger hand in determining what comes up for a vote. And yesterday they forced a vote on the same stay-the-course resolution that Democrats are now trying to put before the Senate. Democrats have been clear about the strategy behind this resolution: they’ve described it as a “slow-bleed,” a way of tying the hands of the Commander in Chief. The House said yesterday that it supports the troops — yet its leadership is preparing to deny the reinforcements that those troops will need in the weeks and months ahead. The Senate was created to block that kind of dealing. And today, it stops at the doors of this chamber.



Even opponents of the war denounce the tactics of the Democratic leaders. In an editorial today, The “New York Times” called yesterday’s House vote a “clever maneuver to dress up a reduction in troop strength as a “support the troops measure,” adding, “It takes no courage or creativity for a politician to express continuing support for the troops and opposition to a vastly unpopular and unpromising military escalation.”



The “Washington Post” was rightly appalled in an editorial this morning by the slow-bleed strategy, calling it a “crude hamstringing” of the military commanders and their ability to deploy troops.” The “Post” exposed the details of Mr. Murtha’s plan to add language to a war funding bill that would strangle the President’s ability to get reinforcements to soldiers in the field, all under the guise of having them better prepared.



Why, the “Post” asked, doesn’t Mr. Murtha simply strip the money out of the appropriations bill, something he is clearly free to do? Good question. And the astonishing answer comes from Mr. Murtha’s own lips: “What we are saying,” he said, “will be very hard to find fault with.”



There is no place for this kind of chicanery at a time of war. Even some of the President’s most strident opponents know that. They know that the only vote that truly matters is a vote on whether to fund the troops. That’s the vote House Republicans were denied yesterday. And that’s the vote Senate Republicans, and a growing number of clear-eyed observers on both sides of this issue, are demanding of us today.



Let those of us who support the President’s plan to win in Iraq say so. Let those of us who oppose it say so. But we will not be forced to vote for a resolution that says we support the troops but does not ask us to seal that pledge with a promise to help them carry out that mission in the only way they can — funding their mission.



####