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Barack Obama shares a 75% similarity with your beliefs on Iraq and Foreign Policy

 I strongly support setting a withdrawal timetable for US troops to leave Iraq

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Them

"In Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki has indicated he wants a timetable for withdrawal. That is the view of the vast majority of Iraqis as well.... If we have a timetable, and they suddenly see the urgency behind the fact that the American troops are going to be leaving and they need to get their act together, then this is the perfect moment for us to say: We are going to shift our resources [to Afghanistan]."

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" We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal."

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Introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act, a bill to cap troop levels in Iraq, begin phased redeployment, and remove all combat brigades from Iraq before April 2008.

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Sen. Obama, on his Web site, says that the drawdowns would begin "immediately" and continue at a pace of one to two brigades - which each normally number between 3,500 and 4,500 troops - per month. He hopes to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, or by the middle of 2010.

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He [Obama] disappointed some Democrats by not taking a more prominent role opposing the war - he voted against a troop withdrawal proposal by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin in June 2006, arguing that a firm date for withdrawal would hamstring diplomats and military commanders in the field.

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"Q: How do we pull out now, without opening Iraq up for Iran and Syria? A: Look, I opposed this war from the start. Because I anticipated that we would be creating the kind of sectarian violence that we've seen and that it would distract us from the war on terror. At this point, I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. But we have to send a clear message to the Iraqi government as well as to the surrounding neighbors that there is no military solution to the problems that we face in Iraq. So we have to begin a phased withdrawal; have our combat troops out by March 31st of next year; and initiate the kind of diplomatic surge that is necessary in these surrounding regions to make sure that everybody is carrying their weight."

2007 YouTube Democratic Primary debate, Charleston SC Jul 23, 2007

"We shouldn't be sending more troops to Iraq, we should be bringing them home. It's time to find an end to this war. That's why I have a plan that will begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq on May 1st of this year, with the goal of removing all of our combat forces from the country by March of 2008."

2007 IAFF Presidential Forum in Washington DC Mar 14, 2007

 I oppose the increase in US troop levels in Iraq which has been ongoing throughout 2007

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Them

"I think that there is no doubt that the violence is down. I believe that is testimony to the troops that were sent and to General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated..."

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"They [additional troops] are making a difference in certain neighborhoods. But the overall strategy is failed because we have not seen any change in behavior among Iraq's political leaders."

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"Our troops have done all that they have been asked and more, but no amount of American soldiers are gonna solve the political differences that lie in the heart of the sectarian conflict. Extending the surge is just going to put more men and women in the crossfire of a civil war."

Virtual Town Hall on Iraq, sponsored by MoveOn.org Apr 10, 2007

In January 2007, Obama proposed the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, which would reverse the troop surge and redeploy U.S. troops to Afghanistan and other locations in phases.

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