“No Longer Staring Into The Abyss Of Defeat”
WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate John McCain says the United States is “no longer staring into the abyss of defeat” in Iraq, opening a campaign week that will draw him and his Democratic opponents back to Washington to question commanding Gen. David Petraeus about the conduct of the unpopular war.
McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has tied his candidacy to the war, now in its sixth year. He has praised last year’s U.S. troop increase — now being reversed.
In a speech he planned to deliver at the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the National World War I Museum, McCain’s text highlighted a sharp drop in violence in recent months. From June 2007 until last month, when McCain visited Iraq, violence fell by 90%, and deaths of civilians and coalition forces fell by 70%, McCain said in the prepared remarks.
“We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” McCain said.
“The dramatic reduction in violence has opened the way for a return to something approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi,” McCain said.
Today is the start of a key week that was likely to see the U.S. presidential campaign veer sharply back to the Iraq war with the Congressional testimony of commanding Gen. David Petraeus.
While the Iraq war has been pushed into the campaign background by the slumping American economy, Petraeus’s much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday will place him in the Senate chambers of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.
Petraeus, who also will report face-to-face to U.S. President George W. Bush, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee, where McCain and Clinton, a New York senator, hold seats. Petraeus will face Obama during his appearance at the upper house’s Foreign Affairs panel.
Rather than focus on Iraq, Clinton and Obama have been hammering away on the stumbling American economy as they battle for votes in Pennsylvania, which votes later this month.
(AP)
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