A top lawmaker voiced fears Tuesday that US President George Bush’s administration was negotiating deals with Iraq that would amount to an open-ended commitment to stage US combat missions there.
Administration officials say formal US-Iraqi negotiations will begin later this month on a legal framework aimed at keeping security policy options open for both countries beyond 2008, when the UN mandate for US forces ends.
Ohio and Texas loomed large Tuesday for Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with excrutiatingly close primaries in both states determining the final chapter of a mesmerizing presidential contest.
After 11 straight losses to Obama, Clinton mustered a win in tiny Rhode Island while Vermont delivered an overwhelming victory to Obama. But it was contests in the southwest and in the heartland that would set the direction for the campaign to come.
Mike Huckabee bowed to reality Tuesday and out of the Republican presidential race. “We kept the faith,” he told his end-of-the-road rally Tuesday after John McCain clinched the nomination. “I’d rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place.”
The genial conservative went out as he had campaigned all along, with a quip: “It’s time for us to hit the reset button.”
John McCain’s last-man-standing strategy prevailed. Now, on to the general election and the hurdles that come with it.
“I do not underestimate the significance nor the size of the challenge,” the Republican nominee-in-waiting told the Associated Press on Tuesday, looking to the next chapter of his presidential quest.
A significant challenge is right.
Hillary Rodham Clinton showed renewed strength Tuesday in Texas and Ohio among whites and working-class voters who had begun deserting her in recent contests, early results from exit polls in the states showed.
With her back against the wall in a pair of contests that seemed virtually must-win, the New York senator seemed to be limiting Barack Obama to groups that have supported his candidacy from the start of this year’s Democratic presidential contest.
John McCain secured the Republican presidential nomination as the ultimate survivor — winning it eight years after his first failed attempt and decades after cheating death in the Vietnam War.
Easy to laugh and easy to anger, McCain carries with him the scars of battle in both armed conflict as a naval pilot and in the political wars of Washington as a U.S. senator from Arizona.
NBC News has declared Hillary Rodham Clinton as the winner of the Democratic primary in Ohio.
With just over 50 percent of the votes counted, Clinton has 57 percent of the vote compared with 41 percent for Barack Obama.
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton split a pair of New England primaries Tuesday night and vied for bigger prizes in Ohio and Texas in a riveting Democratic presidential race. Arizona Sen. John McCain, an unflinching supporter of the war in Iraq, clinched the Republican nomination.
“We are in Iraq and our most vital security interests are involved there,” said McCain at a victory celebration nearly a decade in the making.
Obama won Vermont’s Democratic primary, gaining nearly 60 percent of the vote for a 12th straight victory over the former first lady.
This is where we stand. We have 4 candidates running (well really three but who counts huckabee anyway), John McCain is a conservative so of course as a gay male with a little common sense it should even be a factor for our community to vote for him. Then we get down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. My problem is, while I think that both of these individuals have an amazing background and would be great for the presidential office I have one problem. I stand on what I like to call a prioritzed scale on who i vote for. The most important is a reasonable exit to this criminal war we are in.
Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of the Democratic primary in Rhode Island giving her one race out of four with contests in Ohio and Texas still undecided.
With eight percent of the vote counted, Clinton had 53 percent of the vote, compared to 45 percent for Barack Obama.
Obama was declared the winner in Vermont earlier in the evening. The races in Ohio and Texas are still too close to call.