Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was in Des Moines on Tuesday to talk about his campaign issues.

The town hall meeting was held in the Des Moines Area Community College Automotive Lab of the urban campus where Obama addressed issues such as outsourcing, health care and the war in Iraq.

“We should go through our tax code and we should stop providing tax breaks to companies that are moving overseas,” Obama said, receiving applause from the audience.

Obama also talked about retirement benefits for workers.

“We need to think about our retirement security so that it works for everybody,” he said. “If a company has promised somebody a retirement benefit, that is a sacred obligation.”

Anther topic of discussion was energy independence. Obama said it was important not only for the environment, but also for creating jobs.

“Iowa knows better than just about any state in the union,” Obama said. “There is no reason why we can’t create good jobs here in the United States that improve our energy independence [and] improve our environment.”

Obama said achieving energy independence would depend on who the next president is.

“We got to have somebody in the White House who actually cares about energy independence and doesn’t just talk about it,” he said.

Before Obama took questions, he read some statistics related to the $756 million that the Des Moines Congressional District had spent on the war through 2007. Teachers, health care, schools, housing, education were all statistics Obama cited.

“For the same amount of money, we could have gotten 238,000 people with health care,” he said.

Obama also brought up that he had opposed the war back in 2002, and said an issue such as war needs to be taken very seriously.

“There are no do-overs on an issue as important as war,” he said.

Obama said he was for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but not a “precipitous” one. He said it would stutter by taking U.S. troops out of combat positions, and bringing some out. He said there would need to be some residual force in the region for municipal support for the governemnet and to go after al-Qaida.

To stabilize the region, Obama said the U.S. would need allies such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

“But, we’ve also got to talk to our enemies, because Iran and Syria have a stake in the stability of Iraq as well,” he said.

He said those countries are destabilizing Iraq right now because of American presence.

Obama also talked about the current health care system in the United States.

“We don’t have a health care system, we have a disease care system,” he said.

Obama also said he would approve of stem-cell research as president. He said it was a “tragedy” that the current administration has ignored research on issues such as climate change and stem cell research.

“I don’t know about you, but I want a White House that is driven by reason and facts and science,” he said.

Obama was also asked about his opinion of NAFTA and WTO.

“What I have said consistently is that our trade agreements have to be based on not just looking out for the interests of corporations, they have to be based on the interests of workers as well, and that is something we have not seen,” he said.

Obama said NAFTA has displaced many Mexican farmers and was one of the reasons for the increase of immigration.

Naeem Abdullah, student at DMACC, said he came to the town hall meeting to show support for Obama. Abdullah said he had a lot of confidence in Obama for his ideas on health care and the economy.

Lisa King, workforce literacy specialist for DMACC, said she came out to see what Obama had to say about employment. King said the war and health care were the issues most important to her.

“If he can follow through with all of it, it sounds like a great plan,” she said.