An election victory for the Democrats is unlikely to produce an immediate change of course towards policy in Iraq, the party s chairman said Sunday. As Republicans accuse the minority party of wanting to cut and run from Iraq, chairman Howard Dean said the party did not believe there should be a sudden pullout of all U.S. troops. The president will still be in charge of foreign policy and the military ... I don t imagine we re going to be able to force the president to reverse his course, Dean told the CBS Face the Nation program. But we will put some pressure on him to have some benchmarks, some timetables and a real plan other than stay the course, he added. Congress will have some influence on Iraq policy after establishing the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, with President George W. Bush s approval. The commission, co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker, is assessing the war and will release its policy recommendations after the elections. Dean said a small U.S. force should be left somewhere near Iraq to help prevent the establishment of a terrorist haven in the region. We will need to leave a force of special-operations folks in the Middle East, not in Iraq but on the periphery of Iraq, so we can deal with terrorism in a timely manner, he said. We don t believe now we should suddenly pull everybody out. Iraq has become a central election issue with a week left before voters decide whether to hand control of Congress to the Democrats, or leave Republicans in charge. Democrats hope to capitalize on widespread discontent over the war s direction, while Republicans are playing on their generally perceived national security advantage. Representative Duncan Hunter (Republican from California), chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said U.S. troops should remain in Iraq until the new government is functioning and the people are safe. We did that in Germany, we did that in Japan, we did that in the Philippines, he said on Fox But Representative John Murtha (Democrat from Pennsylvania), a former Marine, said U.S. troops were part of the problem. I think there is more terrorism throughout the world, and all of the polls indicate this, Murtha said on the Fox program. The Iraqis believe this, the people in the periphery of Iraq believe that and the American public believes the same thing.
