Sen. Barack Obama's plan for Iraq includes immediate withdrawal of one or two brigades every month and completing a full withdrawal by the end of 2008.
He is also calling for a new constitutional convention in Iraq to be convened with U.N. help, greater diplomatic efforts both inside Iraq and in the region, and a response to the humanitarian disaster that he says the Bush administration has not dealt with.
At the same time, Obama tells Michele Norris that he is not calling for total disengagement from Iraq, since the United States has both strategic and humanitarian interests in the country.
"What my plan calls for would continue to involve U.S. troops protecting a U.S. embassy and U.S. personnel there. We would continue to have U.S. troops who are able to strike at terrorist targets inside Iraq, although the troops themselves and the strike forces might not have to be deployed inside Iraq," Obama explains.
Obama says that if the Iraqi government was able to build its own, nonsectarian and functional security forces, he could see the U.S. continuing to serve in a training capacity.
"But all of this is premised on triggering the kind of political negotiations and compromise that, so far, have not been forthcoming from the Iraqi leadership," Obama says.
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