Bush Frustrated, Obama and Clinton Say No Military Solution in Iraq, Call for Withdrawal

Obama: No Military Solution in Iraq

By JOHN HANNA Associated Press Writer

Aug 21, 2007, 4:21 PM EDT

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) --

Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday the recent increase in American troops in Iraq may well have helped tamp down violence, but he insisted there is no military solution to the country's problems and U.S. forces should be redeployed soon.

Obama spoke a day after his main Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, made similar comments. She said the tactics of the short-term troop increase were working but political progress did not seem to be in sight and the U.S. should begin bringing some troops home.

Obama said in a telephone briefing, "If we put 30,000 additional troops into Baghdad, it will quell some of the violence short term. I don't think there is any doubt about that."

But that won't solve Iraq's critical political problems, he said in the call and again later in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"All of our top military commanders recognize that there is no military solution in Iraq," Obama said at the VFW convention in Kansas City. "No military surge can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq's leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks. The only thing they seem to have agreed on is to take a vacation."

He concluded, "That is why I have pushed for a careful and responsible redeployment of troops engaged in combat operations out of Iraq, joined with direct and sustained diplomacy in the region."

A day earlier, Clinton, too, told the vets that new tactics have brought some success against insurgents, particularly in Iraq's Anbar province.

"It's working. We're just years too late in changing our tactics," she said. "We can't ever let that happen again."

As for the broader situation in Iraq, she said, "I do not think the Iraqis are ready to do what they have to do for themselves yet. ... I think it is unacceptable for our troops to be caught in the crossfire of a sectarian civil war while the Iraqi government is on vacation."

Associated Press writer Beth Fouhy contributed to this report from New York.

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Bush Acknowledges Frustration in Iraq

By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer

Aug 21, 2007, 4:14 PM EDT

MONTEBELLO, Quebec (AP) --

President Bush acknowledged frustration with the troubled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday but said it's up to the Iraqi people to decide whether to continue supporting him.

Stopping short of offering an endorsement, Bush said it was not up to the United States to give a verdict on al-Maliki's government.

Bush was asked about the situation in Iraq at a news conference where he joined Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon in wrapping up a North American summit.

A day earlier, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the Iraqi assembly to oust the U.S.-backed al-Maliki and replace his government with one that is less sectarian and more unifying.

"And I think there's a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general, inability to work -- come together to get, for example, an oil revenue law passed or provincial elections," Bush said.

The senators said that during their visit to Iraq last week they told Iraqi leaders of American impatience with the lack of political progress, and "impressed upon them that time has run out in that regard."

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