WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, released the following statement in reaction to President George Bush’s speech this morning on terrorism:

“The President’s decision to go to war in Iraq has turned into a black hole taking the lives of our brave young men and women, shrinking our treasury, and eliminating any chance we may have of bringing security to the Middle East.”

“The overwhelming consensus of the national intelligence community is that the war in Iraq is creating new jihadists faster than it is killing them in a gruesome version of buying high and selling low.  But in this case, the price of folly is not a business going broke -- it is the heartbreak visited on American families as their sons and daughters are killed or wounded, and the evisceration of our Armed Forces as the war on terror rebuilds elsewhere.  But as we have learned over the years, President Bush and the Republican Congress refuse to listen to these inconvenient facts.”

“It is now an inconvenient fact that Republicans are driven by their fear of being held accountable by the American people for their failure to make us safe.  They have hitched a ride on a death spiral, where ‘staying the course’ is an arrogant euphemism for using the bodies of American soldiers to wage a wrong-headed war.  Invading Iraq was a monumental blunder, but that mistake has now been eclipsed by repeating the mistake, day after day, of staying there.”

“Today, President Bush again refused to speak honestly with the American people and admit that his war in Iraq is making us less safe every day.”

For more information, please go to http://markey.house.gov