U.S. Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen said the military should focus on fighting al-Qaida on the Afghan-Pakistani border, instead of staying in Iraq.
"Our soldiers are in the middle of a civil war," Shaheen said yesterday as she outlined her position on foreign policy at St. Anselm College in Manchester. "The war in Iraq is not about al-Qaida."
The former Democratic governor, running against Republican incumbent John Sununu, did not give a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. But she did say they should be taken out of Iraq as "soon as possible."
State Republican leaders say such a position represents a "180-degree turn" for Shaheen on the war and foreign affairs.
"When she was a candidate in 2002, she supported President Bush on the war," state Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen said. "She abandoned that position with great ease, now that she's a candidate again."
Cullen stressed Sununu remains committed to keeping troops in Iraq until the region is stabilized. Sununu voted against withdrawing U.S. troops in 2007.Shaheen's camp said the Republicans are trying to distract attention from their own record of support for the war in Iraq.
But Shaheen did support going to war in Iraq six years ago when she ran against Sununu the first time, losing the election.
She said that she believed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a national threat and that she feared his country had developed weapons of mass destruction.
In 2004, she came out against the war while working as a national chairwoman for Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign.
During her speech, Shaheen said terrorists on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan posed a greater national security threat than the war in Iraq. She noted that when U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before Congress earlier this month and was asked by U.S. Sen. Joe Biden to choose where al-Qaida posed the greatest threat to U.S. interests - in Iraq or on the Afghan-Pakistani border - he stated clearly the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
She also said that on April 17, the Government Accountability Office issued a report faulting the Bush administration's lack of a comprehensive strategy to pursue terrorism in Pakistan, despite giving that country more than $10.5 billion in military and economic aid.
