Kerry Sketches an Iraq Exit Plan (replace most U.S. troops in Iraq in 4 yr

[papau]

(The U.S. has 140,000 of the 160,000 troops in Iraq, with Brits most of the remaining 20,000)



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kerry3aug03.story

Kerry Sketches an Iraq Exit Plan (replace most U.S. troops in Iraq in 4 yrs)
He calls replacing most U.S. troops with foreign forces within a first term a 'reasonable' goal.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

August 3, 2004

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Within a first term as president, Sen. John F. Kerry thinks he could attract enough international help in Iraq to make it a "reasonable" goal to replace most U.S. troops stationed there with foreign forces, he told The Times in an interview.

"I will engage in the creation of a very different equation, very rapidly," the Democratic presidential nominee said of troop deployment in Iraq.

The interview, conducted Sunday night during Kerry's bus tour through the Midwest, continued the aggressive challenge to President Bush's national security record that the Massachusetts senator and other Democrats offered at the party's national convention last week.

Kerry flatly asserted that he was more qualified to conduct international diplomacy than Bush. He argued that the president was so committed "to rushing to the job of going to war" that Bush failed to sufficiently question the intelligence he received on Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion.

Discussing the new terrorism threats to financial institutions, Kerry said the administration had failed to exhibit enough urgency about strengthening the nation's defenses.<snip>


For instance, Kerry accused Bush of overlooking flaws in prewar Iraq intelligence. "The information that was on the president's desk wasn't even accurate, and some people knew that at the time," he said. "And a president who wasn't just rushing to the job of going to war would have taken the time to check on those sources, to make absolutely certain."<snip>