Now online, the full audio of this
morning's conference call featuring John McCain's senior
foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann. A quote:
Senator Obama's judgment on Iraq has been universally
wrong. He opposed the surge. He predicted it would fail. He said
not only would it not decrease sectarian violence, it would likely
increase it. Had we followed his course of action there would have
been no surge, funding for troops would have been cut off last
year. He proposed a withdrawal plan in January 2007 that would have
all our troops out of Iraq by March 2008. He rewrote his website on
the surge and now he is trying to rewrite history saying he always
knew the surge could reduce sectarian violence.
Had we followed Senator Obama's advice in fact he would not be in
Iraq today because Iraq would be in chaos. He couldn't visit Basra
as he's doing today because Basra would be under the control of
Iranian backed killers rather than under the control of the Iraqi
government and coalition forces. So what we're seeing today is a
real watershed moment for Senator Obama. Is he going to listen to
our commanders in the field and talk about and listen to them when
they say any withdrawal must be based on conditions or is he
stubbornly adhere to his politically motivated plan to have an
unconditional withdrawal driven only by dates, arbitrary dates,
rather than conditions on the ground?
Later, Scheunemann accuses Obama of "selectively misinterpreting"
developments and advocating "unilateral cowboy summitry" with Iran.
topics:
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Iraq, Iran, NATO
