Dick Durbin: “What I described to you is the Baker-Hamilton proposal. I did make exceptions for leaving troops there for training…”

“What I described to you is the Baker-Hamilton proposal. I did make exceptions for leaving troops there for training purposes and for hunting down al-Qaida terrorists, those specific circumstances. My feeling is that over a 4-to-6-month basis, we need to establish timelines so our troops could start moving away from Iraq and the Iraqis can step in. I use 10,000 a month because that is the way the math works if you follow Baker-Hamilton. It could be zero troops withdrawn or redeployed in the first 60 days, and 20,000 or 30,000 at some future time. My personal belief is that until the Iraqis understand that we are leaving, they will not accept the responsibility to defend their own government and country, and they won't make the hard political decisions to put an end to the civil war.”