Congresswoman wants troops home from Afghanistan

A Wisconsin candidate for U.S. Senate says the killing of 16 Afghan civilians blamed on a U.S. soldier should accelerate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin says Sunday’s atrocity should push up the Afghanistan withdrawal timeline from 2014.

“If these help create a greater consensus to achieve that, that will be a silver lining in a dark cloud of what we see unfolding there,” Baldwin said.

In a campaign swing through Superior, Congresswoman Baldwin says she visited Afghanistan in 2010. That convinced her that the mission there was over.

“I had concluded that the mission they were sent to achieve, had been achieved years ago, and now they were on a very different mission, a nation building mission,” she said. I don’t think that’s what congress authorized and I believe they need to come home now.”

President Obama reiterated the U.S. will not pull its troops out of Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline.

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