Giuliani says U.S. will need long presence in Iraq

U.S. troops will likely be fighting in Iraq when the next president takes office in 2009 and some U.S. forces will need to stay there to deter regional threats, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said on Tuesday.

Like President George W. Bush, Giuliani cautioned against a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, saying Washington must avoid what happened in Vietnam when the U.S. pullout led to "the killing fields of Cambodia, a newly energized and expansionist Soviet Union and a weaker America."

"The consequences of abandoning Iraq would be worse," the former New York mayor wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine laying out the broad contours of his foreign policy. Reuters