Here is heartening news: The first of the major Democratic presidential candidates tells the White House not to start a war against Iran. Now, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, what say you?

(Reid, Pelosi-care to add your voices? John Warner? Retired generals?)

The Huffington Post presents exclusive excerpts of a major policy speech to be delivered in Iowa today (9/12) by Senator Barack Obama in which the Illinois senator will declare: “George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear-loud and clear-from the American people and the Congress: you don’t have our support, and you don’t have our authorization for another war.”

Sen. Obama is calling for an immediate beginning of withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, with the pullout to be completed by the end of 2008:

“Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year-now. We should enter into talks with the Iraqi government to discuss the process of our drawdown. We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later. But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year.”

The Associated Press reports on Obama’s Iraq pullout plan here.

President Bush will address the nation about Iraq war on Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.