McCain says Democrats can’t keep promises on Iraq

Republican presidential candidate John McCain will accuse
his Democratic rivals of making promises they cannot keep with regard to Iraq on Monday in a speech that kicks off a week
in which the war returns to center stage of the U.S. presidential campaign.

McCain, a senator from Arizona
who has wrapped up his party’s White House nomination, will tell an audience of
veterans that the United States
can look ahead to success in the war, but a hasty withdrawal of troops would go
against both U.S.
and Iraqi interests.

Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, a senator
from Illinois, and Hillary Clinton, a senator
from New York, have promised to begin
withdrawing troops from Iraq
soon after taking office.

Obama promises to start immediately, and Clinton has said a drawback could begin
within 60 days of her becoming president.

McCain is expected to challenge either Obama or Clinton in
November elections to succeed President George W. Bush.

The Arizona senator’s
speech comes amid renewed violence in Baghdad and
ahead of Congressional testimony this week from Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq.

All three presidential candidates are scheduled to return to
Washington to
be present for the testimony.

A lauded Vietnam war veteran, McCain has staked his
candidacy on his support for an increase in U.S.
troop levels in Iraq,
a policy dubbed the “surge.”

According to excerpts of the speech, McCain will say on
Monday that the surge is working to bring security to the country and a level
of normalcy to the Iraqi people’s lives.

He will say withdrawing troops too soon would be a
leadership failure and a political promise that cannot be kept.

Obama and Clinton have criticized McCain for indicating the United States could keep troops in Iraq for 100 years, but McCain hit back on
Sunday, saying his comments were made within the context of U.S. troops maintaining a presence in countries
such as Japan and South Korea.

“Senator Obama and anyone who reads that knows that I
didn’t think we were in a 100-year war,” he told television program
“Fox News Sunday.”

Meanwhile in Baghdad
hospital sources said at least 25 Iraqis were killed and 98 wounded in clashes
in the country’s capital. Rocket or mortar attacks killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded 31 of them in Baghdad, among the
biggest tolls of injured troops faced by the Americans in months.

The Iraq
war was once the key issue in voters’ minds ahead of the presidential
elections, but the souring economy has since moved to the top rung of people’s
concerns.