Clinton, by 2009, Obama by 2008…… can I get a 2007?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Likely presidential contender Senator Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) called for the removal of all US combat forces from Iraq by March 31, 2008, to counter what he called President George W. Bush’s “failed policy of escalation.”

“The American people have waited, the American people have been patient. We have given chance after chance for a resolution that has not come,” Obama said on the floor of the US Senate, as he pledged to introduce legislation calling for the troop pull out.

“The time for waiting in Iraq are over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close, and the need to bring this war to an end is here,” said the Illinois Democrat, a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2008.

“In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed and promote stability,” Obama said.

The legislation he proposed, dubbed the “Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007,” would reverse what Obama called the administration’s “dangerous and ill-conceived escalation.”

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