Obama calls for withdrawal of Iraq troops

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said that US combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 to end “a foreign policy disaster”.

The Illinois senator introduced a bill yesterday to force the redeployment under law, but that is unlikely while President George Bush is in office and could veto it. Still, Obama said he is taking Bush up on his challenge to critics to offer alternatives.

“It is important at this point that Congress offer specific constructive approaches to what’s proven to be a foreign policy disaster because we’ve got too much at stake to simply stand on the sidelines and criticise,” he said.

Obama’s bill would cap troop levels in Iraq at the early January level of around 130,000, when Bush announced he would send 21,500 additional US forces to Iraq. It would require that troops begin coming home on May 1 with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31, 2008.

Asked to respond to Obama’s plan, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “Any plan that sets arbitrary troop caps or begins to pull troops out of Baghdad before the city is secure will not lead to the political reconciliation we all agree is necessary for Iraq to be a stable democracy.”

Some Democratic rivals such as John Edwards and Tom Vilsack have called on politicians to withhold funds for the additional troops.

“If we simply cut off funding without any structure for how a redeployment takes place, then you could genuinely have a Constitutional crisis or at least a crisis on the ground where the president continues to send troops there but now they’re being shortchanged in terms of armaments and support,” Obama said.

Some legal scholars question whether Congress has the authority to bring troops home because the president has control of military forces.

Obama noted that he taught constitutional law for 10 years and rejected the notion that the congressional authorisation for war in 2002 gives Bush “carte blanche to proceed in any way".

“The notion that as a consequence of that authorisation, the president can continue down a failed path without any constraints from Congress whatsoever is wrong and is not warranted by our Constitution,” Obama said.

Obama said troops should be sent to three locations – home to the US, in countries around Iraq to prevent regional conflict and to Afghanistan, which he said is in danger of falling back to the Taliban.

The bill would also place conditions on economic aid to Iraq and would allow for a temporary suspension of the redeployment if the Iraqis meet security, political and economic benchmarks.

Obama said he thinks his bill could get bipartisan support, but he doesn’t have any co-sponsors yet.