Menendez visits Iraq

A surge in troops in Iraq may have reduced violence, but it cannot be called a success because the political improvements promised by the Bush administration have not materialized, Sen. Bob Menendez said Saturday from Baghdad.

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After a 90-minute meeting with the top American military and civilian officials -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker -- Menendez said in a telephone interview that he had the same concerns about keeping troops in Iraq as he had before he arrived.

The surge of troops last year had two goals: to reduce violence and to provide "breathing room" for Iraqis to address the thorny issues of building a national government among rival factions. A central issue was and is how to handle the nation's oil, particularly fields in the northern Kirkuk region that is under Kurdish control.

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"We still have all the challenges that the surge was meant to help resolve," Menendez said. "If, at the end of the day, the space that we bought them has been squandered, what does that mean for U.S. troops and what does that mean in terms of U.S. taxpayer dollars?"

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http://www.northjersey.com/politics/13928627.html