Until Sunday
While he isn’t interested in strolling with McCain, Obama does have an interest in going to Iraq:
Barack Obama’s campaign said Wednesday that the Illinois senator is considering a trip to Iraq before the November election, CNN’s Candy Crowley reports.Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain had strongly criticized Obama earlier in the day for not visiting Iraq in more than two years, and for turning down the Arizona senator’s suggestion that the two should make a joint trip to the country.
“Senator Obama has been to Iraq once — a little over 2 years ago he went and he has never seized the opportunity except in a hearing to meet with Gen Petraeus,” McCain said at a campaign event in Reno, Nevada. “My friends this is about leadership and learning.”
Again raising the issue of Obama’s willingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, McCain also said of the Illinois senator, “he wants to sit down with the president of Iran but hasn’t yet sat down with Gen. Petraeus, the leader of our troops in Iraq?”
Responding to McCain, Obama spokesman Bill Burton said, “It seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq.”
Obama last visited Iraq in January, 2006 for a two-day tour of the country.
McCain’s comments come the same day the Republican National Committee launched a clock on its Web site noting how many days it has been since Obama traveled to Iraq, and three days after his supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested both the presumptive Republican nominee and Obama tour the country together. McCain later said he agreed that the Democratic presidential contender should accompany him on an upcoming trip, adding that he would “seize that opportunity to educate Senator Obama along the way.”
Burton declined the invitation and called the move a “political stunt.”
“The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer,” he added.
Speaking Wednesday, McCain called those comments a “profound misunderstanding” of the situation in Iraq.
“That is a profound misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding of what’s happened in Iraq and what’s at stake in Iraq,” he said. “Because if we set a date of withdrawal as Senator Obama wants to do, there will be chaos, there will be genocide, there will be increased Iranian influence there, and we will have to go back with further sacrifice of American blood and treasure.”
