Obama: Bush Iraq plan 'continues same mistakes' Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday September 9, 2008





Print This Email This Dem candidate insists McCain offers 4 more years of Bush policy Responding to President Bush's announcement that US troop levels in Iraq would remain unchanged until the next president takes office, Democratic candidate Barack Obama said the proposal was too "modest" to be effective and accused his Republican opponent of wanting to continue Bush's policies.



"The president's talk of return on success is a new name for continuing the same strategic mistakes that have dominated our foreign policy for over five years," Obama told reporters after campaign stops Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio.



Obama said Bush's plan "comes up short" and demonstrates the need for a comprehensive overhaul of US strategy in Iraq. Earlier Tuesday, Bush called for maintaining combat troop levels through the end of 2008 and said 8,000 troops could come home by February of next year, by which time either Obama or John McCain will be in the White House.



Continuing a harsh line of attack he began at the Democratic convention, Obama tied McCain tightly to Bush's foreign policy, and he all but accused the president of allowing Osama bin Laden to remain on the lam since 9/11.



"John McCain has been talking a lot about change, but he is running for four more years of the same foreign policy that we've had under President Bush," Obama said, charging the GOP candidate of emphasizing Iraq while losing focus of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he called the true central fronts of the war on terrror.



"We've still heard no explanation for why Osama bin Laden is still at large," Obama said, "because that's where John McCain and George Bush's judgment have gotten us."







