Paying Attention, Anyone?

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama blasted George W. Bush's decision to keep Iraq war troop levels largely unchanged, linking rival John McCain to the unpopular president's war policies as he tried to regain momentum in the U.S presidential race.

Obama has seen his poll number slide after McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate and has since been on the defensive as the veteran Arizona senator seized on his central campaign theme of changing Washington and tried to make it his own.

The first-term Illinois senator has also campaigned on a pledge to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months of becoming president, and Bush's announcement allows him to refocus attention away from Palin and onto the two wars being fought by American troops, an issue that U.S. voters have turned away from in their anxiety over the shaky economy.

Bush said Tuesday that he would keep the U.S. force strength in Iraq largely intact until the next president takes over and outlined what he called a "quiet surge" of additional American forces in Afghanistan. Obama fired back that the announcement means taxpayers "will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a $79 billion surplus."

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Bush on troop withdrawals from Iraq
Sept. 9: President Bush addresses the limited withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and the need to continue support for Afghanistan and Pakistan in defeating the Taliban and Al-Queada.
MSNBC


"In the absence of a timetable to remove our combat brigades, we will continue to give Iraq's leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile their differences," Obama said while campaigning in Ohio, a crucial swing state.

"Now, the choice for the American people could not be clearer. John McCain has been talking a lot about change, but he's running for four more years of the same foreign policy that we've had under George Bush. Senator McCain will continue the overwhelming focus on Iraq that has taken our eye off of the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11," Obama said.

Down in Iraq, up in Afghanistan
Bush's announcement means that the U.S. will withdraw about 8,000 combat and support troops by February — a drawdown not as deep or swift as long anticipated — and what likely will be Bush's last major move on troop strategy in Iraq.

Bush also spoke of raising the troop level in Afghanistan to nearly 31,000, compared with about 146,000 in Iraq. He said that a Marine battalion that had been scheduled to go to Iraq in November would go to Afghanistan instead, and that that would be followed by one Army combat brigade.

But the limited focus on Afghanistan, the one-time safe-haven for al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden, and where Taliban militants are regaining strength, left the Republican president open to criticism that his focus in the so-called "war on terror" continues to be misplaced.