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Iraq

Barack Obama has said that he will bring the last American soldier home by 16 months after he takes office. If the Prime Minister had made such a commitment, British soldiers would be coming home this summer, not in the spring of 2009 and 2010. In the light of his refusal to hold a proper inquiry into the Government's Iraq policy, will he explain here and now why, in contrast to the young Senator Obama, he got it so badly wrong about the necessity of the war in the first place, the difficulties of the occupation and, most important, the huge human cost in service and civilian casualties of the worst foreign policy error of any Government in more than 50 years?