Announcing his bid for the presidency in an interview with ABC's "This Week," Thompson said he got a strategy to win the first caucuses in Iowa in next year's presidential primaries.

"I really got an Iowa strategy, and I've been in Iowa every single week since the first week in December," he said.

On Iraq, Thompson, who served four terms as Wisconsin governor between 1987 and 2001, said he would have a "completely different" strategy if elected president. "I would demand the al-Maliki government first to vote as to whether or not they want the United States in the country," he said.

If the Iraqis voted that they wanted the United States to stay in the country, "it immediately gives a degree of legitimacy (for the U.S. military presence)," he said.

Thompson said he believed that the Iraqis would vote for the U.S. forces to stay, but that if they voted no, the United States would get out of Iraq.

He also proposed a plan to distribute Iraq's oil revenues -- one-third of the oil revenues would go to the Iraqi central government, one-third to the "territorial governments," and one-third to the Iraqis.

Thompson, a Wisconsin native born in November 1941, earned his law degree at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He served as health and human services secretary between 2001 and 2005, and established an presidential exploratory commission in December last year.

Besides Thompson, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Senator John McCain and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney all have announced their candidacy for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2008.