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Columbus, Ohio : Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Thursday said he believes the Iraq war can be "won" within four years, leaving a functioning democracy there and allowing most US troops to come home.
The senator's two Democratic rivals for the White House, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are running on a pledge to begin bringing US troops home right away and have linked McCain's policies on the unpopular war to those of President George W. Bush.
McCain says any decades-long presence of US troops would be aimed at maintaining stability in the region and has likened it to the US military presence in Japan, South Korea and Germany.
McCain, running in the November election to succeed Bush in 2009, described a scenario he thought he could achieve within his first four-year term. "The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension," McCain said.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said that, if elected, he would like to take a page from the British government and appear in question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers.
"I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both Houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons," McCain said in excerpts of a speech he is to deliver later in Columbus, Ohio.
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