Parsing The Democrats’ Iraq Plans

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“We will begin to withdraw our troops within 60 days,” Clinton promised last Sunday during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press program.

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Obama’s official position also includes redeploying one to two brigades of combat troops from Iraq every month during the first year of his presidency. Such a plan would leave approximately 50,000 American troops in Iraq at the end of 2009.

“The only troops that would remain would be those who would protect U.S. bases and U.S. civilians as well as to engage in counter-terrorism activities in Iraq,” he said in an MSNBC debate last September.

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Of the three, John Edwards has been the most sweeping in his desire to remove U.S. troops from Iraq, saying he envisions less than 5,000 troops would stay behind specifically to guard the U.S. Embassy and “humanitarian workers” in Iraq.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/18/6452/