Iraq is the No. 1 Issue

The war in Iraq is the No. 1 issue in the country today. Americans are no longer willing to accept the human suffering or the financial toll of a war that has lasted for 3 ½ years with no end in sight.

The numbers speak for themselves. We've lost almost 2,600 Americans. More than 19,000 have been wounded, 46 percent of them so badly they couldn't return to their units. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence. The U.S. is spending $11 million every hour - $8 billion every month. Yet the administration refuses to budge from its open-ended, stay-the-course policy. I know it and the American people know it: We need to redeploy our troops to the periphery and refocus on the real war against terrorism. It's long past the time for us to change direction.