With the Iraq war much on voters’ minds, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain offer slightly different choices of war strategy in Tuesday’s primary.
McCain, senator of Arizona, was a POW in Vietnam. He has been a steadfast supporter of the war in Iraq. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has portrayed himself as favoring the military mission in Iraq. The two have often sparred over the intensity of their support of the war.
In the last GOP debate, hosted by CNN on Jan. 30, for example, Romney tried to dispel criticisms that he supports a “series of timetables and milestones” for exiting Iraq, saying that McCain took the quote out of context.
“It’s simply wrong,” Romney said. “Let me make it absolutely clear again tonight, I will not pull our troops out until we have brought success in Iraq, and that means, for me, that we do not have safe havens for Al Qaida or Hezbollah or anyone else, that our troops have secured the population from that kind of threat, that they will not have safe havens from which they could launch attacks against us.”
McCain has long supported the war, including the latest so-called “surge” of more troops under Gen. David Petraeus and President George W. Bush.
“The fact is that I have fought for this surge. I have said we need to have this succeed. I know the situation in Iraq and I am proud to have supported this president and supported the fact that we are succeeding in Iraq today,” said McCain.
Here are highlights of the GOP front-runner candidates’ proposals for the war:
McCain: On his Web site, McCain lays out a detailed and long-term plan for the U.S. military involvement in Iraq. He calls for:
“Iraq’s transformation into a secure democracy and a force for freedom in the greater Middle East is the calling of our age,” McCain said in last week’s CNN debate. “We can succeed.”
Romney: He opposes a specific date for withdrawing American troops. He has called for these measures:
“The key to effective homeland security, in my view, is intelligence, finding the attackers before they attack,” Romney says on his Web site.
(Bryan Young is a sophomore magazine journalism and political science major.)
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