Obama calls for withdrawal of troops from Iraq

therawstory

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) will call for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq in Iowa today.

Excerpts follow.

“Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was,” he will say, according to advance remarks from the speech. “The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year – now.”

Notes AP: “Obama’s ardent opposition to the war has been a central theme of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he has used it to distinguish himself from leading rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. She voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq; Obama was not yet a senator.”

“We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later,” Obama will add.

“But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month,” he says. “If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year.”

“The president would have us believe there are two choices: keep all of our troops in Iraq or abandon these Iraqis,” he continues. “I reject this choice.”

Obama is being introduced by President Carter’s onetime National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, likely in an attempt to bolster his credentials on the question of experience, which has dogged him throughout his campaign with Sen. Hillary Clinto (D-NY).

In the speech, according to AP, he argues for “creating an international working group of countries in the region and in Asia and Europe that would work to stabilize Iraq.”

(Original Article)