Clinton, Obama and Edwards on the Iraq War

Tom Hayden provides us a summary of the positions of the Big Three Democratic candidates on the Iraq War in The Media and Iraq Huffington Post 01/18/08:

• Clinton , while pledging to withdraw combat troops, offers no timetable and will keep some combat troops and advisers in Iraq through her first term, and she leaves open the possibility of permanent bases for a longer period. Their purposes will be to fight al-Qaeda terrorism, train Iraqi forces, guard the oil, and protect the embassy.

• Obama will withdraw all combat troops on a 16-18 month schedule, and leave counter-terrorism units and advisers indefinitely but under narrower mandates than Clinton [;] he says he will pull them if the Iraqi factions don't reconcile, for example

• Edwards will pull all troops, combat and advisory, in a one-year period, though redeploying a force to Kuwait.

Despite the current "press corps" conventional wisdom that the Iraq War is no longer important to voters, the New York Times/CBS poll for 01/09-12/08 shows that 22% of voters named "war" or "Iraq" as "the most important problem facing this country"; 20% named the economy. Health care was named as the most important problem by 7%. (Question 3 in the the poll report.)

Tags: iraq war, tom hayden