Quote from: Reaganite
He will continue to ask obama to go with him to iraq... side by side to see the progress, and Obama will continue to decline because Obama CANNOT allow the people to see he was wrong.
Posted by: Abraxas Can you expand on this? I'm not aware of such an arrangement.
I mean this honestly. I really never heard of this.
McCain invites Obama to visit post-surge Iraq
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — It’s been nearly 29 months since Sen. Barack Obama made his first and only visit to Iraq and the McCain campaign believes that their likely Democratic rival needs to take a second look.
“Senator Obama keeps talking about an immediate withdrawal as soon as he gets to be president. The last time I understand he was in Iraq was in 2006. I would recommend that he go back. So much has happened since 2006 on the ground. It’s been extraordinary,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close McCain ally, told CBS Face the Nation yesterday. “I think if he would look at what’s happened in Iraq, talk to General Petraeus and (Prime Minister) Maliki, I think he would have a different view of what you need to do next.”
Graham even went so far as to invite Obama–who was last in Iraq in January 2006 as sectarian violence was raging and a year before the surge was implemented–to join McCain for a joint trip.While the chances of seeing Obama and McCain grab a falafel together in a Baghdad market any time soon is very unlikely, the McCain campaign plans to push Obama’s lack of recent on the ground experience this week. The campaign sees this as another way to paint Obama as weak and inexperienced on foreign policy issues and argue that Obama’s call for a troop withdrawal is not backed up the most recent facts on the ground.
In contrast with Obama, McCain has flown to Iraq eight times since 2003, most recently visiting the country in March.***UPDATE 7pm: McCain follows up on Graham comments in interview with the AP***
“Look at what happened in the last two years since Senator Obama visited and declared the war lost,” the GOP nominee-in-waiting told The Associated Press in an interview, noting that the Illinois senator’s last trip to Iraq came before the military buildup that is credited with curbing violence.
“He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,” the Arizona senator added. “If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn’t had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly.”….
“For him to talk about dates for withdrawal, which basically is surrender in Iraq after we’re succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable,” said McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times, most recently in March.
Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain’s top surrogates, laid the groundwork for McCain’s criticism in a television interview in which he noted Obama’s absence from Iraq and floated the idea that Obama and McCain should go together to be briefed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Asked whether he’d be willing to take such a trip, McCain told the AP: “Sure. It would be fine.”
“I go back every few months because things are changing in Iraq,” he said. McCain questioned whether Obama has ever been briefed by Petraeus. “I would also seize that opportunity to educate Senator Obama along the way.”Obama spokesman Bill Burton declined to respond directly to McCain.
“Senator Obama thinks Memorial Day is a day to honor our nation’s veterans, not a day for political posturing,” Burton said.
