FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Obama Press Office 202-228-5566
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today released the following statement in response to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which concludes the Iraqi government has not met most of the security and economic benchmarks set by Congress:
“The GAO report confirms that Iraq’s leaders are not achieving the political reconciliation that was the stated purpose of the surge. There is no military solution to Iraq’s civil war. It’s time for President Bush to stop searching for new justifications to continue the wrong policy. It’s time to make the future of Iraq the responsibility of Iraq’s leaders, and to stop making excuses for the Iraqi government’s failure to meet critical benchmarks. It’s time to surge our diplomacy and our efforts to deal with Iraq’s humanitarian crisis. It’s time to begin to bring our troops home so that we can relieve a strain on our military that endangers our national security. It’s time to end a war that should never have been authorized.”