U.S. can win Iraq war within four years: McCain

By Caren Bohan

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Thursday he believes the Iraq war can be won within four years, leaving a functioning democracy there and allowing most U.S. troops to come home.

The Arizona senator's Democratic rivals for the White House, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are running on a pledge to begin bringing U.S. troops home right away and have linked McCain's policies on the unpopular war to those of President George W. Bush.

The Democratic candidates also charge McCain wants to keep the United States entangled in Iraq for 100 years.

McCain says any decades-long presence of U.S. troops would be aimed at maintaining stability in the region and has likened it to the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea and Germany.

McCain, running in the November election to succeed Bush in 2009, described a scenario he thought he could achieve within his first four-year term.

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.

The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.