Foreign Policy Debate - Lessons of Iraq: Much has been sa...

SEN. MCCAIN: I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear, that

you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly

lose a conflict.

Our initial military success, we went into Baghdad and everybody

celebrating, and then the war was very badly mishandled. I went to

Iraq in 2003 and came back and said we've got to change the strategy.

This strategy requires additional troops, it requires a fundamental

change in strategy, and I fought for it. And finally we came up with

a great general and a strategy that has succeeded. This strategy has

succeeded, and we are winning in Iraq. And we will come home with

victory and with honor. And that withdrawal is the result of every

counterinsurgency that succeeds.

And I want to tell you that now that we will succeed and our

troops will come home, and not in defeat, that we will see a stable

ally in the region and a fledgling democracy. The consequences of

defeat would have been increased Iranian influence, it would have been

increasing sectarian violence, it would have been a -- a wider war,

which the United States of America might have had to come back. So

there was a lot at stake there. And thanks to this great general,

David Petraeus, and the troops who serve under him, they have

succeeded, and we are winning in Iraq, and we will come home -- and we

will come home as we have when we have won other wars and not in

defeat.

MR. LEHRER: Two minutes for how you see the lessons of Iraq,

Senator Obama.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I

have a fundamental difference because, I think, the first qu