Obama Campaign: McCain Will Fail On Al-Qaeda And Pakistan

Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice and former CIA officer Bruce Reidel held a conference call yesterday to address what they consider the Bush Administration's failed approach toward Pakistan and toward the recently reported safe havens that exist there for Al Qaeda operatives. A McCain Administration, they said, would continue that failed policy.

Speaking for the Obama campaign, Rice and Reidel referred directly to a report published yesterday in the New York Times that detailed the rising number of Al Qaeda operatives being trained in the forbidding borderland region of Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago."

During the call, Rice and Reidel said that, as president, Obama would focus on a multi-layered economic approach that would aim in part to draw in help from NATO to eliminate the Al Qaeda presence in Pakistan.

Rice made a point of underlining McCain's support of the Bush policy in the region and called it a case of "poor judgment."

"We have five times the troop levels we have in Afghanistan in Iraq, yet John McCain wants to keep our troops in Iraq indefinitely," she said.

She added that by giving economic assistance to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the U.S. would be "in a better position to leverage comparable contributions from NATO."

"The heart of the terrorist threat has always been in Afghanistan and [on the] Pakistan border," Reidel said.

The two appeared slightly defensive, however, about comments Obama made last summer on his willingness to move independently on "actionable intelligence." Obama said that, as president, he would strike Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan with or without the permission of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and was called naive by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain for holding such a position, although pressed on the matter by a conservative talk radio host recently, McCain seemed to back pedal from that stance, searching to explain how he would act differently on the same sort of intelligence.

"Of course, of course I would take action if we had actionable intelligence," McCain said. "We just acted on some actionable intelligence and apparently we may have killed eleven Pakistani soldiers. Um, and uh, that is, obviously arouses the anger of some in Pakistan... Of course you would, if you had actionable intelligence, you would take action..."

Rice called Obama's controversial stance on the region "a new approach" and highlighted that he was the only candidate at the time to make such a statement on U.S. policy. She added that Obama's plan for the region includes a commitment to add an additional two combat brigades in Pakistan.

Rice and Reidel responded to a reporter's question on whether or not the Times article itself in their opinion constituted "actionable intelligence." Both disagreed.

"It's not the kind of intelligence that tells you where you can drop a bomb," responded Reidel. Rice responded to the question saying, "actionable intelligence is widely understood to mean time and place specific."

Follow Christine Escobar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/greenparentchgo

Comments

[realtalk]

McCain is clueless, John McCain is a part of the past, a part of the FAILURES of the past, WHICH HAVE RESULTED IN THE FOREIGN POLICY PROBLEMS WE HAVE NOW.
John McCain has been involved in all the foreign policy blunders, and mistakes we have had been involved in, AND John McCain is up to his neck in being involved in our current foreign policy ones, which has resulted in a war which should NEVER have been waged in Iraq, AND the foreign policy which has resulted in the ignoring of finding Bin laden, and the members of AlQueada, and have resulted in us NOT having enough troops in Afghanistan to find Bin laden, Al Queada, and the Taliban.

John McCain's very presence in the presidential race, is the presence of a man who has been involved in MOST of the foreign policy MISTAKES our country has faced, blunders which John McCain wants to continue with the decision he has made to continue the Bush Foreign Policy.

[doofmann02]

This McCain flip-flop bothers me the most. His knee-jerk response was to whine about making Pakistan mad. Somebody not tell him we have been using Predators or that Al Qaeda and Taliban are here?

Pathetic.