It's time to bring troops home! - Joe Biden

3,769 American soldiers have died in the Iraq war

By Dennis Zaki - Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden blasted General David Petraeus and President Bush and their phony report on the Iraq war and said at a Senate hearing Monday "It's time to end the surge and bring the troops home" from Iraq.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Joe Biden blasted General David Petraeus and President Bush and their phony report on the Iraq war and said at a Senate hearing Monday It's time to end the surge and bring the troops home from Iraq.

Biden said that Bush "has no plan, how to win and how to leave" Iraq.

"The surge, for whatever tactical or temporary security gains it might achieve, is at the service of a fundamentally flawed strategy," he said, arguing it is at best a "stopgap" effort.

Petraeus recommended to President Bush that current American force levels be maintained in Iraq through next spring even though the overwhelming evidence is that the "surge" has been a failure and the civil war in Iraq is out of control.

Opening a Senate hearing on progress in Iraq, Joe Biden told Gen. David Petraeus he found little reason to believe that sectarian violence will end in Iraq.

"Are we any closer to a lasting political settlement? If we continue to surge, is there any evidence Sunnis, Shias and Kurds will stop killing?" Biden asked Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

"The answer to both those questions is 'No,' " Biden said.

With another 7 dead soldiers on Monday, 3,769 U.S. military personnel have died in the Iraq war.

Over 600,000 Iraq civilians have died.