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Iraq

I think I made the precise point that terrorist activity and, by implication, those assisting such activity do nothing to hasten the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq—indeed, they delay withdrawal, because one of the four criteria by which we judge the conditions in which we would hand over power and the lead in security to the Iraqis is the level of the threat from terrorists. Therefore, by definition, anything that increases the level of that threat diminishes the propensity to withdraw.