US Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on Monday that he would try to pull American troops out of Iraq within four years.

"We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term," Kerry told voters at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.

Kerry, meeting later with mineworkers in West Virginia, said that the United States is carrying the burden in casualties and cost in Iraq.

"This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, and he's cost all of you 200 billion US dollars that could have gone to schools, could have gone to health care, could have gone to prescription drugs, could have gone to our Social Security," hesaid.

"It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

As of September 3, 976 US soldiers have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003. Of those, 730 died as a result of hostile action and 246 died of non-hostile causes, according to the US Defense Department records.

Source: Xinhua