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Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama laid out his Iraq war policy in a New York Times op-ed earlier this week. The Illinois senator described Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki’s call for a timetable for withdrawal “an enormous opportunity.” Describing the Bush Administration’s surge in Iraq as successful, Obama proposes a phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq over the course of sixteen months. The plan, however, would leave an undisclosed number of soldiers in place described solely as a “residual force.” Obama’s Iraq strategy is aimed at redirecting troops to Afghanistan where he plans to send at least two combat brigades. Meanwhile, a Guantanamo interrogation video of Omar Khadr, a Canadian boy captured in Afghanistan in 2002 was just released offering a rare glimpse into the detention facility that the Bush administration has used to house so-called enemy combatants. Just sixteen years old at the time, Khadr is shown being questioned by Canadian officials with a CIA agent present in the room. Uncontrollably sobbing, the Guantanamo detainee ii seen holding his head, rocking back and forth and uttering “help me,” or “kill me.” After six years, Khadr is set to be tried by the military on five counts of war crimes allegedly committed in Afghanistan.

GUEST: Miriam Pemberton, Research Fellow – Peace and Security Program, Institute for Policy Studies. Co-editor, Lessons From Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (2008) Military Affairs Editor, Foreign Policy in Focus