NEW YORK: Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have attacked the US President, Barack Obama, for allegedly playing election politics over Iraq after his surprise announcement that all US troops would be brought home by the end of the year.
The withdrawal seems certain to become a campaign issue in the wholesale jerseysbattle for the White House as Republicans seek to undermine Mr Obama's recent run of foreign policy and security breakthroughs.
The Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, led the attacks, as Mratlanta braves jerseys Obama's foes portrayed him as a wavering commander-in-chief. The pull-out would pave the way for greater Iranian influence over its neighbours, also predominantly Shiite Muslims, they said.
The announcement prompted a debate about what the US had achieved during the war, which has claimed nearly 4500 American lives and cost more than $US700 billion ($674 billion). More than 100,000 Iraqis have died during the war.
''President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly cheap mlb jerseystransition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women,'' Mr Romney said.
''The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government.''
The Obama campaign hit back with equal venom. ''Mitt Romney's jerseys wholesale foreign policy experience is limited to his work as a finance executive shipping American jobs overseas,'' said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama's re-election team. ''The President kept his pledge to the nation to end the war in Iraq in a responsible way. Mitt Romney didn't lay out a plan to end the war in Iraq in his foreign policy agenda - he barely even mentioned Iraq - but he is apparently willing to leave American troops there without identifying a new mission.''
In recent months, the Obama administration has been trying to secure an agreement with the Iraqi government that thousands of US troops could remain with immunity from prosecution beyond the end of combat operations this year. The refusal of the Iraqi authorities to agree to that was a major snub to Washington, although it will bolster Mr Obama's standing with the Democratic party's anti-war wing.
Mr Romney and fellow Republicans contended that the withdrawal was acheap jerseys political decision and that the White House had deliberately delayed attempts to secure an immunity deal.
Foreign policy issues have largely been absent from recent Republican debates. But the party's leaders do not want to yield that ground to Mr Obama, after his credentials have been bolstered by the killings this year of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born radical cleric, as well as the success of NATO policy in Libya.
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