Newsday: Baker plan for Iraq sounds familiar (Kerry proposed it in 2004)

[Cocoa]

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=313848&Category=14&subCategoryID=

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This course, which academic and other experts on the Middle East have been advocating, bears a striking similarity to the approach promoted by a certain prominent American politician more than two years ago: Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry.

“We still have an opportunity to prevent Iraq from becoming a failed state and a haven for global terrorists and Islamic extremists,” Kerry wrote in a Washington Post op-ed article on July 4, 2004.

The Democratic presidential nominee called for a change of course that would give economic incentives to draw in estranged European allies, who might then agree to a peacekeeping role for NATO troops. He proposed a regional diplomatic conference with Iraq’s neighbors to keep borders intact, prevent outside interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and protect minorities.

Many of these ideas were included in Kerry’s plan, co-authored with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, to gradually redeploy U.S. troops by July 1, 2007. The measure was voted down, 86-13, in June. Republicans cried “cut and run.” Most Democrats cowered.

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