According to a recent Washington Post/ABC poll Iraq is still one of the main issues in the 2008 Presidential election, along with some other stuff.

I think that an important thing to review then would be how we think candidates will manage the war and how quickly they would bring the troops home. It seems that there is a lot of conflicting evidence about what these candidates would actually do once they were in office.

Questions for Debate:
1) Which Democratic candidate would end the war in Iraq the quickest(other than Dennis Kucinich, I think we can all agree that he would end the war faster than the other candidates)? What evidence do you have to support your belief?

2) Which Republican candidate would end the war in Iraq the quickest (other than Ron Paul, I think we can all agree that Ron Paul would end the war faster than the other candidates)? What evidence do you have to support your belief?

3) Who would end the war sooner, the Republican candidate mentioned or Hillary Clinton? Why?

1) Governor Bill Richardson wants the troops pulled out of Iraq immediately:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/071004/...s_richardson_dc

2) I do not have evidence to support this hunch, but I believe that Governor Romney, as a businessman, would be more apt to see the continuing hemorrhaging of money and lives in Iraq as inefficient use of resources and personnel and would call for a pull-out sooner than McCain (well, duh!), Huckabee et al. Giuliani might pull a surprise move and bring most of the troops out, but I wouldn't bet on it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/11/romney/

3) I can't say that Senator Clinton would end the war sooner than Governor Romney, even though it seems a much higher priority to her supporters and to Democrats in general than to Romney's. Once the current occupant of the White House is out, there will be far less incentive to continue his policies. Ronald Reagan is the patron saint of the GOP, not Bush, Jr., and I think that another Republican president would, although he can't put it into as strong words at this time, try a different strategy in the protracted "War on Terror" without dissing the current president if possible.

I didn't know that about Richardson, but that is interesting. I guess that I was thinking among the top three on the Democratic side, to which I would say Obama would end it first. He seems to have been pretty consistent in his opposition. Hillary one day will say 2013 and the next say the war is a failure and we need to end it immediately. Edwards? He doesn't have the complete voting record to review like the other two.

As for the Republicans, I'm going to go completely opposite of you though. I think John McCain would in actuality bring the troops out of Iraq sooner than Romney or Guiliani. Of course, McCain wants to 'win' the thing and would probably increase the troops before removing. Romney and Guiliani have never been in the military, and have never made foreign policy decisions. Romney is a great businessman but he has no credentials that show me that he would have any idea what to do in Iraq and his obvious willingness to say whatever he has to get elected shows a lack of character to handle those tough decisions. Guiliani takes care of his friends more than his constituents from what I can tell. Is it likely that it will be good for his friends to pull out of Iraq? I don't know, but I doubt it.

McCain on the other hand has been there and done that. If you listen to him speak, it is like he has read this story and knows the ending. Do you really think that John McCain wants to drag this thing out any more than possible? He cares enough to take stands criticizing the handling of the war and backing up ideas that could end this quicker despite the fact that it hurts his chances of election. I think that if a surge fails, John McCain can see writing on the wall and pull out.

Plus he is the only fiscal conservative of the three. The financials alone will disgust McCain enough to end it. Guiliani left New York billions in debt. Romney essentially passed Hillarycare in Massachusetts. The money won't effect those two at all.

I have a lot of respect for Senator John McCain. I only base my assumption that he would not be the first to bring the troops out of Iraq because he has been so gung ho about the war.

Guiliani I wouldn't trust any farther than I could throw him. I have no idea why that Rev. Pat Robertson endorsed him unless what the late Jerry Falwell said is true: that he figures their folks would rather "vote for the antichrist than for Hillary Clinton."

Romney has been known to flip-flop when it suits him, case in point the issues of gay rights and abortion. I just don't figure he likes the bottom line, and I think he values less the idea of staying in Iraq out of a sense of patriotic duty. He has demonstrated a sensitivity to what the Republicans think to the degree that some of us feel that his convictions are malleable.

What you say about McCain might be true, I can't say. But it is unfortunate that a lot of us perceive him as being pro-war to the extent that he would continue the conflict.

Don't get me wrong. I think McCain would continue the conflict too. I just think that if he is the best person to manage the war, that includes managing it to a close. If the other Republican candidates are not going to set a timeline or commit to immediate withdrawl, which none of them outside of Paul (or Hillary Clinton for that matter) have, then it's probably pretty safe to assume that the war will be mismanaged and therefore prolonged. McCain has said no to the draft, understands that the American public is war weary, and has hinted that the intelligence for this war was suspect. Watch him and you don't see a warmonger by any means.