Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., waves after speaking at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati, Monday, July 14, 2008. |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama says he's running for president to lead U.S. foreign policy in a new direction that isn't focused on Iraq.
As he prepares to travel to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama says the fight in Iraq is distracting the United States from all the other threats it faces.
Obama says the Iraq war "diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century."