Presidential candidates on Iraq
Barack Obama on Iraq
On going to war
Democrat Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator in 2002 when Congress voted to give President Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq. “I don’t oppose all wars. “What I am opposed to is a dumb war,” Obama said at the time. He predicted that even a successful war in Iraq would require “a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at an undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences,” and “fan the flames of the Middle East.”
On Bush's troop increase
Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was opposed to Bush’s plan in January 2007 to temporarily build up U.S. troop levels in Iraq to combat sectarian violence and help Iraqis achieve independence. In September 2007, Obama also criticized Bush’s proposal to withdraw those additional troops by summer 2008 but leave behind about 130,000 forces. “He is bound to the same failed course that we have seen for the last several years,” Obama said of Bush.
On moving forward
Obama proposed in September 2007 to remove all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2008. He called for a “new approach” on achieving reconciliation among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq. Obama’s plan also would escalate diplomatic efforts to engage Iraq’s neighbors and the United Nations to help stabilize Iraq, and provide more humanitarian aid to the war-torn country.
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