For the past couple of months, the 2008 presidential candidates focused their attention on primaries, controversies, and the declining US economy.

Recently, interest has returned to tackling the problems surrounding the Iraq war.

The 5-year anniversary brought about a grim realization. The death toll of US soldiers surpassed 4,000, prompting the contenders to re-address their Iraq War stance.

Yesterday, at a campaign stop at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, John McCain gave a half-hour speech stressing the need to stay longer in Iraq to secure the government and economy.

He explained that withdrawing troops would be damaging to the Iraqi citizens and was optimistic about the future of the war-torn region:

“We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat,” McCain said. “We can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.”

McCain also criticized the plans the Democrats are looking to implement calling such strategies “hasty, reckless, and irresponsible.”

The speech came just before General David Petraeus’ testimony before Congress about progress in Iraq.

Democratic rival Barack Obama fired back at his Republican opponent in a written statement urging the need to bring soldiers’ home:

It would be a “failure of leadership to support an open-ended occupation of Iraq that has failed to press Iraq’s leaders to reconcile,” Obama wrote.

Still fighting for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton sided with Obama and took it a step further - comparing McCain to the Bush administration. Clinton said that if McCain was to be elected as the President, there would be:

“four more years of the Bush-Cheney-McCain policy of continuing to police a civil war.”

She is expected to give a speech after the Senate hearing with Gen. Petraeus which occurred this afternoon.

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