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Obama, McCain sharpen their dispute over Iraq war

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NPR-· The two major presidential rivals sharpened their long-standing dispute over the Iraq War on Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama calling it a costly distraction that must end while Republican Sen. John McCain insisted it is a conflict the United States has to win.

“Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we don’t have unlimited resources to try and make it one,” Obama said in a speech in which he also said the United States must shift its focus to defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Rebutting swiftly, McCain said Obama “will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards.”

While the two men agreed on the importance of prevailing in Afghanistan, the dispute veered in a new direction when it came to the tribal areas of next-door Pakistan, where terrorist Osama bin Laden and his men are thought to be hiding.

McCain accused Obama of “trying to sound tough” by speaking publicly of taking unilateral action against those blamed for the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Posted by JohnKonop on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 1:58 am | under Uncategorized | |RSS 2.0 feed | Comments and pings closed. |

3 Responses to “Obama, McCain sharpen their dispute over Iraq war”

  1. JohnKonop says:
    July 16, 2008 at 7:25 am

    US troops pull out of Afghan base after attack

    AP-U.S. and Afghan troops have abandoned a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan where militants killed nine American soldiers this week, officials said Wednesday.

    Compounding the military setback, insurgents quickly seized the village of Wanat in Nuristan province after driving out the handful of police left behind to defend government offices, Afghan officials said.

    Some 50 officers were headed to the area to try to regain control, said Ghoolam Farouq, a senior provincial police official.

    Sunday’s attack by some 200 militants armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars was the deadliest for the U.S. military in Afghanistan in three years. Rebels fought their way into the newly established base, wounding another 15 Americans and suffering heavy casualties of their own, before the defenders and warplanes could drive them back.

    The assault underlined how Islamic militants appear to be gaining strength nearly eight years after the ouster of the Taliban, and the difficulties facing foreign and Afghan forces trying to defeat them.

    NATO said the post, which lies amid precipitous mountains close to the Pakistan border, had been vacated, but insisted that international and Afghan troops will “retain a strong presence in that area with patrolling and other means.”

    “We are committed, now more than ever, to establishing a secure environment that will allow even greater opportunities for development and a stronger Afghan governmental influence,” NATO spokesman Capt. Mike Finney said.

    Omar Sami, spokesman for the Nuristan provincial governor, said American and Afghan soldiers quit the base on Tuesday afternoon. He said they took the district mayor with them.

    Sami said U.S. troops armed local police with more than 20 guns before they left, but that the officers had fled the village and crossed into neighboring Kunar province when 100 militants moved into Wanat.

    In other violence reported Wednesday, a suicide bombing and a series of clashes left at least 12 Taliban militants and one civilian dead.

    The Kandahar governor said eight militants were killed in the southern province’s Khakrez district in the past two days. A regional Taliban commander, Mullah Mahmoud, who controlled about 250 fighters, was among the dead, NATO said.

    Police said the suicide bomber attacked one of their patrols in Lashkar Gah, the capital of neighboring Helmand province, killing a civilian and wounding six other people, including a policeman.

    In eastern Paktika province, police said four militants planning attacks on supply trucks were killed in an airstrike early Wednesday.

  2. JohnKonop says:
    July 16, 2008 at 7:27 am

    Biden Praises Obama’s Spine, Tells McCain To Study History

    HP-Sen. Joseph Biden started his speech to the Center for U.S. Global Engagement on Tuesday with the caveat that he is not an Obama insider. But he certainly played the part.

    Saying that he knew the Illinois Democrat well from their time together on the campaign trail, Biden said of Obama, he “has the judgment, he has the intellect, which no one doubts, and I guarantee you he has the steel in his spine to lead this country of ours out of the deep hole we have dug ourselves into.”

    His Obama testimony now complete, Biden-the-surrogate turned to the other task at hand: ripping apart the foreign policy of Sen. John McCain. At times, his critique was scathing, accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of lacking the basic gravitas and intellectual capacity to navigate the choppy international waters.

    “President Bush and Sen. McCain lump all the threats together,” said Biden. “Al Qaeda, the Shia militia, listen to them speak. Listen to my friend Joe Lieberman, and he really is a friend, listen to them speak. Find me a distinction that they make. As a consequence of this profound confusion they make profound mistakes. The idea that al Qaeda will cooperate with the philistine, a guy who in fact used to run the country in Iraq, the guy who did away with the caliphate… is completely contrary to anything that the now-dead leader of Iraq had in mind. It’s dangerous. How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can’t define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost.”

    It was a vintage Biden performance, with theatrical and abrupt changes in tone tempered by equally dramatic pauses. Defying the conventional wisdom that foreign policy critiques must come in digestible sound bites, he walked the crowd (already well-versed in Middle East affairs) through what he presented as the major fallacies in the McCain doctrine. Much time was spent on Iran.

    “I find it fascinating, the twisted logic of my friends on the other side talking about how this allows Iran to fight a proxy war against us in Iraq,” Biden roared. “Huh? Guess what. What more would Iran like than the continuation of a 140,000 to 160,000 Americans in Iraq, bogged down in Iraq, no end in sight. Tell me how much Ahmadinejad would like to inherit a fractured Iraq. Study history. The premises upon which they rationalize I find breathtaking. The idea that John [McCain] and Joe [Lieberman] are going to eliminate any vestige of Iranian influence in Iraq, bless me father for I have sinned. Are they unaware of a border that has existed there for millennium? Are they unaware of the fact that our guy, Maliki is inviting Ahmadinejad to Baghdad and kissing him on both cheeks, literally not figuratively. Are they unaware of the fact that this government in Iraq feels compelled to visit Tehran to explain what it is that they are attempting to do with a long-term security agreement?”

    Biden did not address, directly, rumors of his high place on Barack Obama’s short list of vice presidential candidates, choosing instead to make light of being flanked on the Washington Post’s rankings by two women: Hillary Clinton and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. And he started the speech off with an ode to his own White House run, openly wondering how he, “the most qualified man to be president,” could end up in the role of campaign surrogate.

    “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he told the crowd.

  3. JohnKonop says:
    July 16, 2008 at 7:32 am

    Lieberman Rips Obama: His Lack Of Conviction Puts Nation In Peril

    HP-Sen. Joseph Biden started his speech to the Center for U.S. Global Engagement on Tuesday with the caveat that he is not an Obama insider. But he certainly played the part.

    Saying that he knew the Illinois Democrat well from their time together on the campaign trail, Biden said of Obama, he “has the judgment, he has the intellect, which no one doubts, and I guarantee you he has the steel in his spine to lead this country of ours out of the deep hole we have dug ourselves into.”

    His Obama testimony now complete, Biden-the-surrogate turned to the other task at hand: ripping apart the foreign policy of Sen. John McCain. At times, his critique was scathing, accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of lacking the basic gravitas and intellectual capacity to navigate the choppy international waters.

    “President Bush and Sen. McCain lump all the threats together,” said Biden. “Al Qaeda, the Shia militia, listen to them speak. Listen to my friend Joe Lieberman, and he really is a friend, listen to them speak. Find me a distinction that they make. As a consequence of this profound confusion they make profound mistakes. The idea that al Qaeda will cooperate with the philistine, a guy who in fact used to run the country in Iraq, the guy who did away with the caliphate… is completely contrary to anything that the now-dead leader of Iraq had in mind. It’s dangerous. How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can’t define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost.”

    It was a vintage Biden performance, with theatrical and abrupt changes in tone tempered by equally dramatic pauses. Defying the conventional wisdom that foreign policy critiques must come in digestible sound bites, he walked the crowd (already well-versed in Middle East affairs) through what he presented as the major fallacies in the McCain doctrine. Much time was spent on Iran.

    “I find it fascinating, the twisted logic of my friends on the other side talking about how this allows Iran to fight a proxy war against us in Iraq,” Biden roared. “Huh? Guess what. What more would Iran like than the continuation of a 140,000 to 160,000 Americans in Iraq, bogged down in Iraq, no end in sight. Tell me how much Ahmadinejad would like to inherit a fractured Iraq. Study history. The premises upon which they rationalize I find breathtaking. The idea that John [McCain] and Joe [Lieberman] are going to eliminate any vestige of Iranian influence in Iraq, bless me father for I have sinned. Are they unaware of a border that has existed there for millennium? Are they unaware of the fact that our guy, Maliki is inviting Ahmadinejad to Baghdad and kissing him on both cheeks, literally not figuratively. Are they unaware of the fact that this government in Iraq feels compelled to visit Tehran to explain what it is that they are attempting to do with a long-term security agreement?”

    Biden did not address, directly, rumors of his high place on Barack Obama’s short list of vice presidential candidates, choosing instead to make light of being flanked on the Washington Post’s rankings by two women: Hillary Clinton and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. And he started the speech off with an ode to his own White House run, openly wondering how he, “the most qualified man to be president,” could end up in the role of campaign surrogate.

    “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he told the crowd.

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