http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080528/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryqaedaclarke;_ylt=Anke4GBMsRIUAz3AmGiTKIUE1vAI
Former anti-terror czar Clarke: Staying in Iraq 'helps Al-Qaeda'
Tue May 27, 9:12 PM ET
WA****NGTON (AFP) - Maintaining US combat troops in Iraq "helps Al-Qaeda"
and
Wa****ngton should pull them from the ravaged country if it wants to see
progress in the war on terror, former US anti-terror czar Richard Clarke
said Tuesday.
"I think the best thing that we could do to hit Al-Qaeda's attractiveness
to
the Muslim world was in fact to get out of Iraq in an orderly way over the
course of the next two or three years," Clarke said on CNN.
"Our being in Iraq helps Al-Qaeda," he added.
"We have to beat them in the ideological struggle. Getting out of Iraq
will
help that."
The US presence in Iraq has become a flashpoint issue in the 2008
presidential race. Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both
said
they will withdraw troops if elected, while Republican John McCain
sup****ts
the war in Iraq but recently said he envisioned most troops could be home
by
2013.
Clarke said that wasn't soon enough.
The security and counter-terrorism advisor to three US presidents who
resigned in the first term of President George W. Bush's administration,
also said Wa****ngton should reassure Muslim nations that the "war on
terror"
launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks is not a war on Islam.
"We're not fighting Islam," he said.
"And it's not terrorism we're fighting, it's the fundamentalist Islamic
movements that use terrorism as part of their overall approach."
In 2006 Clarke said US security can easily be beaten and the country
remained vulnerable to attack -- an *****sment he reiterated Tuesday by
warning that despite "hundreds of billions of dollars" spent on securing
US
borders, "no significant vulnerability in homeland security has been
removed."
--
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