Five years after the invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power, the Iraq War was shaping both President George W. Bush's legacy and the 2008 presidential race, with the three leading candidates holding fundamentally opposed positions on how to proceed.
Republican John McCain backed a sustained American military presence and warned against a rapid exit. Both Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, called for troop withdrawals; Clinton pledged to begin within 60 days of taking office. The two also quarreled between themselves: Obama highlighted Clinton's 2002 vote authorizing the use of force, while she questioned whether his withdrawal timetable was firm after an aide signaled flexibility.
Bush, with less than a year left in office, stood by the decision to invade despite polls showing roughly two-thirds of Americans now considered it a mistake. A Pentagon-backed study had found no meaningful link between Saddam's government and Al-Qaeda, and no weapons of mass destruction had ever been located. US military deaths in Iraq were nearing 4,000.
An earlier infusion of 30,000 additional troops had curbed sectarian violence but fell short of driving Iraqi political factions toward national reconciliation. Georgetown University professor Charles Kupchan observed that withdrawing from Iraq would prove nearly as difficult as remaining, leaving the next president with no clean options.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2008, in its own words.