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NEW YORK - Sen. John Warner said Thursday President Bush should start bringing home some troops by Christmas to show the Baghdad government that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended. The move puts the prominent Republican at odds with the president, who says conditions on the ground should dictate deployments. Warner, R-Va., said the troop withdrawals are needed because Iraqi leaders have failed to make substantial political progress, despite an influx of U.S. troops initiated by Bush earlier this year.
“We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action,” he told reporters after a White House meeting with Bush’s top aides. Warner’s new position is a sharp challenge to a wartime president that will undoubtedly color the upcoming Iraq debate on Capitol Hill. Next month, Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are expected to brief members on the war’s progress.
Who’s the more astute student of Vietnam War history — President Bush or Sen. John Warner, R-Va.? Warner, the octogenarian GOP Senate powerbroker who served as Navy secretary under President Nixon during the Vietnam War, called Thursday for Bush to begin withdrawing some U.S. troops from Iraq — he used the figure of 5,000 — so that they could be home by Christmas.
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