Iraq: Waiting to re-ignite for next president?

In line with this reasoning, Obama voted for funding military operations in Iraq in 2006.

But in 2007 he decided to vote against funding. “This is a choice between validating the same failed policy in Iraq that has cost us so many lives and demanding a new one.” he said. “I am demanding a new one.”

Obama was an adamant opponent of President Bush’s “surge” of additional troops to Iraq in early 2007 and predicted it would fail.

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse,” he said in January of 2007.

But on Sept. 4 Obama said in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, "I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated. I've already said it's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

However, he said, “the Iraqis still haven't taken responsibility, and we still don't have the kind of political reconciliation” that is needed.

Early supporter
McCain was an early supporter of the invasion in 2003, although he said two weeks before it began, "I'm uncomfortable because you never know what's going to happen in a conflict."

Yet, he said then, it "would be a wonderful thing for the people of Iraq to be freed of a person (Saddam Hussein) who has killed a million of his own citizens, used weapons of mass destruction against them and has a brutal reign of terror...."

By June of 2003, McCain was criticizing the Bush administration for not begin candid with the American people about the cost of the Iraq operation.

He predicted the U.S. effort in Iraq would be "very long and difficult."

He said the American people "have the fortitude to support it because of the incredible benefits that can accrue from it, not only there in Iraq but throughout the region. But they need some straight talk about what the plan is, how long were going to be there and, sooner rather than later, how much the cost is going to be."

How they have voted
McCain voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against Iraq.

Obama was not a senator in 2002, and thus didn’t vote on the resolution, but he spoke in his 2004 Senate campaign against the use of force.

In the 2004 campaign, Obama refused to criticize Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for voting for the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and said he didn't know how he would have voted if he had been in the Senate at the point.

"I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," he said in 2004. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.'"

McCain has voted to continue funding for military operations in Iraq. Obama has voted for funding, but switched to voting against funding in 2007.

Surprises for the new president
Brannen of CSIS said the surge succeeded in imposing some degree of peace because Iraq’s Sunni groups stopped fighting U.S. forces and went on the American payroll, freeing U.S. troops for counterinsurgency missions.

But now, “democracy in Iraq is grinding to a halt,” Brannen said.

“We’ve never had the long promised provincial and local elections and now we’re not going to have them this year. That’s a big problem.”

With the Iraqi government refusing to include the Sunni “Sons of Iraq” in the Iraqi security forces, Sunni frustration could result in new violence between Sunni and Shia forces, Brannen said.

“If the Sunnis don’t get to vote and don’t get to turn their new organization and cooperation into political power, things may quickly look like the kind of sectarian warfare that we’ve seen in the past.”

Another potential surprise that may await the new president: Muqtada al-Sadr’s nationalist movement might revive, with “people in the streets demanding that the United States leave immediately. That’s a shock for either Obama or McCain. Before they can get Iraq to the place you want it to be — stable, democratic, peaceful, not a safe haven for terrorists — the Iraqis are trying to throw you out.”

The U.S. forces might be able to withdraw to the Kurdish northern part of Iraq, but, said Brannen, “What happens if we do that, and then the Kurds declare themselves an independent state?”

The government of neighboring Turkey would object to this, as would other neighboring countries, Brannen said.

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