"It was exactly a year ago that as a candidate I spoke out and called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign, and since then six generals that served under him joined in the calls for his removal, citing professional military reasons why his leadership had failed," Courtney said.

"The war continues to go in the opposite direction that he and Bush had been confidently predicting, and we have a congressman who has been silent, by and large."

"Chris [Shays] is not a military expert. He has absolutely no field experience. He has no training in this area. I understand he claims to be the expert because of his subcommittee, but that doesn't make him a general," she said.

Murphy told seniors the election is "about putting us - not corporations - first again." A New Britain native, Murphy said middle class jobs are not here any more "because chief executives and boards of directors decided they could make a quicker buck moving jobs overseas."

Herald: How do you differ from your opponent on the war in Iraq?

Murphy: I cannot understand how she can continue to follow the President without question on this war. She supports him almost with no reservations. This President has gotten us in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. To provide no check on his policies is unconscionable.

Herald: What's your position?

Murphy: We can no longer have an open-ended commitment in Iraq. There may be a political solution to the violence there, but there is most likely not a military solution that the U.S. can be a part of. While we have been so focused on Iraq the real war on terror is happening in other places. It's happening in Afghanistan. It's happening in Pakistan. It's happening in other parts of the Middle East. Our myopia in Iraq has compromised our ability to meet those challenges elsewhere.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont Thursday said his opponent, U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, skipped almost 400 votes since 1999, including 33 of the 63 total votes taken on the Iraq war.

Earlier in the week, Lamont focused on a smaller slice of the senator’s Iraq war voting tallies, but expanded that Thursday to cover a seven-year period, the same amount of time Lieberman used almost two decades ago when he ran critical ads against then-incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker.