White House hopefuls scramble on Iraq

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Presidential contenders in both parties jostled with each other all day Wednesday to stake out their own distinctive policies on Iraq.

In one way or another, most of the contenders had this message: We don’t want to hurt the troops in Iraq, but we do want to block the commander-in-chief from sending more troops.

Most of the Senate contenders who spoke Wednesday want to go from being legislators hobbling the president to being president themselves in 2009.

Five serious White House hopefuls, Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., Chris Dodd, D- Conn., Joe Biden, D-Del, and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, all voiced their discontent Wednesday with the course of events in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has already set forth his determination to support President Bush’s 21,500 troop surge to Iraq.

Clinton — as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination — got by far the most news media attention with a press briefing at the Capitol jammed by more than 100 reporters

Clinton sees vital interests in Iraq
“We do have vital national security interests in Iraq,” declared Clinton. “Al Anbar province is the staging ground for attacks by the Sunni insurgency and al Qaida in Iraq. Both are directed at us. We have vital national security interests with respect to what Iran is doing in crossing the border. We have a commitment to the future and the safety of the Kurdish people. There’s a lot that we still have as part of our ongoing obligations that are in Americans interests, as well as the interest of the people of Iraq.”

She also said, “I’m not going to support a specific deadline” for getting U.S. forces out of Iraq, but she does support phased withdrawal at some point in the future.

“I do not support cutting funding for American troops,” she said.

Interactive Analyzing the 2008 presidential field

But she said she’d support cutting funding for Iraqi troops if the Baghdad government did not rid the Iraqi army of “sectarian and militia influence.”

Clinton said she was introducing a bill that would limit the U.S. troop level in Iraq to the number of troops that were there on New Year’s Day — a version of an idea also proposed Wednesday by Dodd.

Her bill would require Bush to seek congressional authorization for any additional troops

Yet she also expressed a sense of powerlessness that Congress could do anything soon to persuade Bush to change his policy.

'Little chance' to stop Bush in short run
“Troops are being deployed as we speak… There is very little chance in the short run that we are going to pass any legislation,” she acknowledged.

But she said it was important “lay down some markers” on what Congress expected of the Maliki government.

In a written statement Obama got his voice into the chorus by saying Congress had to figure out some way, which he hasn’t yet detailed, “to support our troops in the field while still preventing the President from multiplying his previous mistakes.”

He, like Clinton and Dodd, came out for capping the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, and he called for phased redeployment.

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