Louisville Courier-Journal : Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture

Obama’s breezy words for post-9/11 torture

By Leonard Pitts | August 6, 2014

“…but we tortured some folks.”

— President Barack Obama, Aug.1, 2014

OK, in the first place: “tortured some folks?” Really?

Was there not something annoyingly breezy in the president’s phrasing last week as he acknowledged the abuse of suspected terrorists in the wake of Sept. 11? Was there not something off-putting in the folksy familiarity of it?

“We tortured some folks.”

What’s next? “He raped a chick?” “They stabbed a dude?”

Granted, it’s a relatively minor point. But to whatever degree phrasing is a window into mindset, the president’s phrasing was jarring. It is, however, what he said next that we are gathered here to discuss.

Obama, speaking to reporters Friday, invoked the atmosphere after Sept. 11 to explain why the CIA, ahem, tortured some folks. He reminded us that we were all terrified more attacks were imminent and our national security people were under great pressure to prevent them. So while what they did was wrong, said Obama, “It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.”

In other words, we were all scared spitless, so it’s … understandable if not precisely condonable, that the CIA behaved in ways that betrayed our national values. But the president is wrong.

In fairness to him, though, let’s stipulate a few things:

One: Obama has never wavered in calling the torture of suspected terrorists precisely what it was, nor in defining it as a betrayal of what America is supposed to stand for. He did so again last week. “We did some things that were contrary to our values,” he said.

Two: Those things did not happen on Obama’s watch. It was George W. Bush’s administration that rationalized and justified the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation.” Bush made this mess. Obama is just the guy with the push broom.

Three: Obama was trying to walk a political tightrope that was probably unwalkable. Anticipating declassification of a Senate report that is said to cast a harsh light on these tactics, he sought to signal disapproval of what the CIA did, yet not throw its personnel — who now, after all, work for him — under the proverbial bus. That wouldn’t be great for morale.

All that said, it was disappointing to hear the president invoke the frenzy of that era as a mitigating factor. By that logic, you could justify the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942, the McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s, or dozens of other sins against freedom strewn like scars across the face of American history. All were born of the same broken rationale: We were scared, so we did things we should not have done.

The thinking seems to be that sometimes fear makes our values too heavy to uphold. Actually, it is our capacity for fear that makes them more critical to uphold. And it is disingenuous to pretend the hysteria of the 9/11 era was such that anyone might have done the same thing.

Not only is that not true, but it also insults the moral courage of people like Sen. John McCain and Obama himself who did stand up and say, emphatically and at political risk, that this was unworthy of us. So it’s not that it was impossible to speak reason, but that the torturers refused to hear it.

They followed orders instead.

The president opposes the idea of prosecuting them for that and he’s right. That would cast a pall over American intelligence gathering for generations forward.

But there is a lesson here that urgently needs learning, an accounting that ought not be ignored. With the best of intentions and the approval of a morally blinkered White House, the CIA vandalized American honor and all involved must be called on it. That isn’t sanctimony.

It’s patriotism.

Write to Pitts at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

NYT : Obama Meets With McCain in Chicago

Obama Meets With McCain in Chicago

By BRIAN KNOWLTON | November 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain agreed on Monday, in their first meeting since the election, to work together on some of the nation’s most pressing challenges, from the financial crisis to national security problems.

After a private meeting in the Obama transition offices on the 38th floor of the Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago, the two men issued a joint statement saying that they agreed “that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time.”

The statement continued: “We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy, and protecting our nation’s security.”

There were few other clues to the dynamics between the two men, who until two weeks ago were vying for the presidency, and whose relations during the campaign were at times a bit frosty. When a reporter asked Senator McCain at the outset of the meeting on Monday whether he would help Mr. Obama with his administration, he replied, “Obviously.”

The meeting came four days after Mr. Obama met with his main rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, sparking widespread speculation that he would nominate her to be secretary of state.

And it came three days after Mr. Obama met with another former rival, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former ambassador to the United Nations who might now be in competition with Mrs. Clinton for the State Department post.The Obama-McCain meeting in Chicago, an effort at reconciliation after a sometimes bitterly fought campaign, came unusually soon after Election Day.

The president-elect and the Arizona senator hold relatively similar views on issues like climate change and ethics reform, where cooperation might be fruitful. More urgently, Mr. Obama may be hoping for help in pushing for a new economic stimulus package that faces stiff Republican resistance.

Also taking part in the meeting were Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a trusted McCain ally, and Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, who is to be Mr. Obama’s White House chief of staff.

Advisers to both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama said that they did not expect Mr. McCain to be offered a job in the new administration.

Mr. Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes” that there would be at least one Republican in his cabinet. He would not say when he might announce his first cabinet nominations, except to say “soon.”

While the Obama-McCain meeting came earlier than some past efforts at reconciliation between newly elected presidents and their vanquished foes, the president’s father, George H.W. Bush, met on almost exactly the same date — Nov. 18 — with Bill Clinton after losing to him in the 1992 election.

Mr. Clinton later called the meeting “very helpful,” though he found that his host wanted to talk almost exclusively about foreign affairs while he had hoped to pick the outgoing president’s brain on domestic affairs.

In 2000, it was not until Dec. 19 that President-elect George W. Bush called on Vice President Al Gore, though that was just a week after the Supreme Court resolved the Florida recount debacle; the two spent less than 20 minutes together at the Naval Observatory, the official vice-presidential residence, where the elder Bushes themselves had once lived.

(President-elect Bush also called that day on Mr. Clinton at the White House. This time it was Mr. Clinton who guided the conversation to foreign affairs for most of a two-hour talk. It was unclear whether anyone brought up Mr. Bush’s vow, during the campaign, to “restore honor and dignity to the White House.”)

In Chicago, Mr. Obama might be mindful of the fact that former rivals can also be future foes. In 2005, Senator John Kerry did not wait even a week after the inauguration of President Bush before launching into barbed attacks on his health care plan, calling it “window dressing.”

WaPo : Bush's Overseas Policies Begin Resembling Obama's

Bush's Overseas Policies Begin Resembling Obama's

By Dan Eggen | Washington Post Staff Writer | September 15, 2008

Barack Obama contends that a John McCain presidency would amount to little more than President Bush's third term. But as it turns out, an Obama presidency might look a bit like Bush's second.

On a range of major foreign policy issues over the past year, Bush has pursued strategies and actions very much along the lines of what Sen. Obama has advocated during his presidential race, according to the Illinois Democrat's campaign and many diplomatic and security experts.

The administration has pushed ahead with high-level diplomatic negotiations with Iran and North Korea, agreed to a "time horizon" for a reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq and announced plans last week to shift troops and other resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. U.S. officials also confirmed last week that Bush has formally authorized cross-border raids into Pakistan without that government's approval -- an idea that Obama first endorsed, and was heavily criticized for, last year.

Bush administration officials and aides to Sen. McCain (Ariz.), the Republican presidential nominee, argue that the developments have little in common with Obama's policies and dismiss any comparison as simplistic and misleading.

But the Obama campaign views the moves as vindication of sorts, arguing that Bush has been forced by the pressure of events to move away from the hard-line policies of his first term and toward a more pragmatic path in his second. When Bush announced the new troop deployments to Afghanistan, for example, Obama said he was "glad that the president is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years."

Obama aides also say the moves by Bush complicate matters for McCain, who is more hawkish than his opponent on issues including the crisis in Georgia and the war in Iraq.

"What we have here, in many ways, is that a McCain presidency would look a lot like a Bush first term and a move back in that direction," said Rand Beers, who served as a National Security Council staffer in Republican and Democratic administrations and is now an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign. "The flip side of that is that John McCain is therefore to the right of George Bush, which I don't think is the way he conceived of his campaign."

But Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, accused the Obama campaign of "rank hypocrisy" and said it was "comical" for the Democrat to now claim accord with the Bush administration on some issues. "I find the whole argument relatively amusing, given that they have done nothing but criticize Bush administration foreign policy and now claim that Bush is moving in their direction," Scheunemann said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

McCain has accused Obama of wanting to "lose in Iraq to win in Afghanistan," criticized him for endorsing direct talks with leaders of Iran and other enemies, and repeatedly called Obama "naive" for publicly advocating the Pakistan raids.

McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, seemed to endorse unilateral raids in Pakistan during an interview last week with ABC News, saying: "We have got to have all options out there on the table." Scheunemann said that Palin's remarks were in line with McCain's views and that McCain's criticism of Obama was focused on his decision to talk publicly about detailed counterterrorism strategies.

The renewed wrangling over foreign policy comes as Obama struggles to convince voters that he is trustworthy on world affairs and seeks to fend off McCain's overall gains in national polls. The Republican nominee has a 17-point lead on the question of which candidate can better handle an unexpected crisis and a double-digit advantage as the one more trusted on international affairs, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week.

McCain and Obama said they approved of Bush's announcement last week that 8,000 troops would be removed from Iraq by early next year while nearly 5,000 troops would be added to Afghanistan by the end of the year. But their interpretations of these events were starkly different.

Obama, although supportive of the shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, criticized the effort as too little and too late. McCain said the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was possible because of the addition of 30,000 troops last year, which the Democrat had opposed. McCain said Obama's "focus is on withdrawal, not on victory."

On the diplomatic front, Obama has made a point of advocating dialogue with Iran as well as Syria, though the McCain campaign accuses him of backing off from a statement that he was prepared to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without conditions. Bush waded into the debate in May during a speech at the Israeli Knesset, when he compared talking with Iran or terrorist groups to the appeasement of Nazi Germany -- a comment widely seen as a swipe at Obama.

Then, in July, Bush sent a high-level U.S. emissary to attend nuclear talks with Iran and authorized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to join North Korean diplomats at six-party talks about ending that country's nuclear programs. The moves prompted howls from many conservatives but were viewed by the Obama campaign as signs that the Bush administration was moving in its direction.

Another case is Georgia, the small country that was invaded by Russian forces early last month. McCain has been notably harsher in his anti-Moscow rhetoric than Obama and has called for expelling Russia from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations. The Bush administration has not taken that step, but it did announce a $1 billion aid package for Georgia that was similar to a proposal previously made by Obama and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), now Obama's running mate.

"They said it was naive to deal with Pakistan, appeasement to talk to Iran, surrender to withdraw forces from Iraq," said Ben Rhodes, an Obama senior foreign policy adviser. "The rhetoric that greeted all of these proposals from Obama does not square at all with the positions the Bush administration has been forced into in recent months."

But the McCain campaign and many other conservatives dispute the comparisons. One senior Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Obama campaign was using "phony talking points."

McCain aides said the argument that the administration has moved toward Obama's positions appears intended to make their candidate appear more extreme. "There's a huge misconception that the Obama campaign has tried to foster that somehow they're in favor of diplomacy and we're not," Scheunemann said.

Gary Schmitt of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that the range of issues amounts to "apples and oranges" and that the administration's recent policies have little in common with the Democratic candidate's views. "I don't think they're moving towards Obama's positions at all," he said.

NYT : Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage

Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage

By FRANK RICH | September 6, 2008

SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.

As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)

Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

How long before we learn she never shot a moose?

Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.

He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.

That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.

As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”

The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.

This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.

We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.

In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.

“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.

What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.

That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.

By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.

Reuters : Palin brings God, guns to Republican ticket

Palin brings God, guns to Republican ticket

Analysis by Ed Stoddard | August 30, 2008

DALLAS (Reuters) - Conservative Republican prayers for the November 4 presidential election may have been answered.

John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate sends a clear message to the party's conservative religious base: God and guns are on the ticket.

Conservative Christians and analysts say the 44-year-old devout born-again evangelical and mother of five has the "right stuff" to energize this base, from her staunch opposition to abortion to her passion for hunting and fishing.

She has a compelling personal narrative for religious conservatives capped by the fact that she opted to have her fifth child even though she knew he would have Down's syndrome -- making her a darling of the anti-abortion movement.

These credentials have been added to the Republican ticket at a time when polls show McCain, a 72-year-old veteran senator from Arizona, gaining ground with the white evangelical Protestants who are key to Republican electoral success.

McCain and Palin will face Democrat Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, and polls show a close race. Obama would be the first black president if elected, Palin the first female vice president.

Despite his consistent opposition to abortion and attendance at an evangelical church, McCain has been criticized in conservative Christian circles for his support for stem cell research and his failure to back a federal ban on gay marriage, among other issues.

"It's a strategically brilliant development for McCain. He ... desperately needed to woo evangelical voters," said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston and leading expert on U.S. evangelicals. "No Republican has captured the White House in modern history without their support."

About one in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical Protestants. The vast majority regard the Bible as God's literal word and take their faith very seriously.

The movement has been fracturing as some leaders broaden their agenda to embrace "liberal" issues such as protecting the environment but many evangelicals still care deeply about abortion and gay rights, which they ardently oppose.

'OUTSTANDING PICK'

Conservative Christians said they were excited by her addition to the ticket.

"Governor Palin is an outspoken advocate for pro-family policies that energize social conservatives. She has a record of advancing the culture of life at every opportunity," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobby group with strong evangelical ties.

"Senator McCain made an outstanding pick ... She's solid on all the core social issues," he told Reuters.

There had been concern among evangelicals that McCain would choose an abortion rights supporter like former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge or Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in a bid to appeal to moderate voters.

Palin's status as a "working mom," whose children range in age from 5 months to 18 years, could be one drawback in the eyes of some conservative U.S. Christians who strongly believe that a mother's place is in the home. But others give her credit for being a devoted mother who they say has been able to balance career and family.

"I have five kids too and I think it is exciting when you see someone who is working actively to make her family a part of her mission," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life Action, an anti-abortion group.

"And her decision to have her child when she knew he had Down's syndrome is a beautiful, beautiful story," Yoest said.

Palin also can help the Republicans target gun owners. She is a member of the National Rifle Association, a lobby group opposed to government restrictions on the ownership of firearms, which it regards as a sacred American right.

"God and guns" often mix in the U.S. heartland. A U.S. survey of licensed hunters and anglers in 2006, commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation, found half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christians.

(Additional reporting by Yareth Rosen in Anchorage)

(Editing by Eric Beech)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

WaPo : Race Proves to Be Unwelcome but Persistent Issue

Race Proves to Be Unwelcome but Persistent Issue

By Juliet Eilperin and Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post Staff Writers | August 2, 2008

PANAMA CITY, Fla., Aug. 1 -- Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama tried yesterday to step back from a divisive debate over race, with each candidate denying that he was the first to inject the issue into the campaign.

Nonetheless, the candidates and campaigns battled throughout the day over the issue and over which side was engaged in "low road" politics, an indication that race is likely to remain a major point of contention in what is becoming an increasingly bitter contest.

For Obama, the argument was an unwelcome distraction that could complicate his efforts to win over voters who may be skeptical of a relative newcomer with an atypical background. It also pulled the focus away from his efforts to stress bread-and-butter economic issues. For McCain, any hint of racist tactics would hurt his efforts with the moderates and independents he needs to win in November.

Yesterday showed how hard it will be for both to avoid the issue now that it has burst into the public sphere. Obama was heckled in St. Petersburg by black nationalists who accused him of not doing enough for the African American community. In Florida's Panhandle, McCain faced a barrage of questions from reporters and asserted that he is not running a negative campaign "in the slightest," even as his aides launched their latest online attack ad mocking Obama as a candidate with a messiah complex.

"I don't think it's negative. I think we're drawing differences between us," McCain said, adding that Obama "brought up the issue of race," and, "I responded to it. Because I'm disappointed, and I don't want that issue to be part of this campaign."

In response to questions about his recent attacks against Obama, McCain said he has been waging "a very respectful campaign." McCain has compared Obama to celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, said he is willing to lose a war to win a campaign, said he would rather play basketball than visit wounded troops, and, on Thursday, accused him of playing "the race card" and playing it "from the bottom of the deck."

McCain, who defended himself against tough policy questions from African Americans yesterday at the National Urban League's annual meeting in Orlando, suggested the media should "move on" from the issue of race because Obama had "retracted" his allegations that he and other Republicans were using his appearance to intimidate voters.

But while Obama has toned down some of the language that the McCain campaign criticized, he did not retract his allegations or back away from his contention that Republicans were trying to scare voters about him. Obama and his aides yesterday faulted McCain for not working hard enough to quash state Republican attacks based on race, saying the candidate was merely stating the obvious when he told Missouri voters Wednesday that some of his opponents were insinuating that he does not fit the mold of a traditional presidential candidate.

"I was in Union, Missouri, which is 98 percent white -- a rural, conservative [community], and what I said was what I think everybody knows, which is that I don't look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates," Obama told the St. Petersburg Times. "I think that what people are really concerned about, what they're looking for, is fundamental change on the economy, things that are going to help their families live out the American dream. There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this. What this has become, I think, is a typical pattern from the McCain campaign, whether it's Paris Hilton or Britney or this phony allegation that I wouldn't visit troops. They seem to be focused on a negative campaign; what I think our campaign wants to do is focus on the issues that matter to American families."

The Obama campaign could produce no evidence that McCain's campaign was responsible for any attack that directly cited his race or his name. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama adviser, said the candidate probably regretted evoking McCain's name when he talked about Republican scare tactics.

But adviser Anita Dunn said Obama was more than justified in lodging accusations Wednesday that prompted McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to say Obama had "played the race card." The North Carolina Republican Party has already used inflammatory images of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and the Tennessee Republican Party mocked Obama's middle name, Hussein. Although McCain decried those efforts, Dunn said it was hardly the full-throated, angry denunciation McCain has shown himself capable of, she said.

"The McCain campaign has clearly made the decision that there really is not a road too low for them to travel," she said.

Other Democrats complained in the spring that McCain's first general-election television commercial -- which ended with the line, "John McCain: The American president Americans have been waiting for" -- was an attempt to exploit doubts about a candidate with an African name.

"Race is a central fact in the campaign. I think it's inescapable," said Tad Devine, a strategist for Sen. John Kerry's campaign in 2004. "It's smart to push back and push back hard. He's got to make sure that people's antennae are up and that the McCain camp cannot be allowed to send messages to people who are receptive to those messages."

For their part, Republicans said the back-and-forth had laid bare an effort by Obama to inoculate himself from the scrutiny any candidate should expect. Obama's stature as the presumptive first black nominee of a major party has made McCain and his campaign "rightfully overly sensitive," said House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.), in whose district Obama campaigned yesterday.

"Obama has been playing both sides of the race card long before he was the nominee," Putnam said. "He played it in the primary. He uses the historic nature of his candidacy to his advantage, which he should, but he also works the refs by accusing his opponents of using the race card, which makes them second-guess common campaign themes."

McCain emphasized his commitment to helping African Americans in yesterday's speech before the Urban League. The Arizonan spoke at length about his support for education, lower taxes and oil drilling -- all of which he said would aid the black community -- before taking more than a dozen questions from the crowd.

Although the group's president, Marc Morial, praised McCain for taking questions, the session was awkward at times, especially when the senator defended his opposition to affirmative action.

Obama wrestled with the issue of racial equality yesterday when hecklers confronted him at a town hall meeting in St. Petersburg.

"Why is it that that you have not spoken to the issues or spoken on behalf of the African community?" demanded Diop Olugbala, 31, citing the plight of poor blacks targeted by predatory lenders, police brutality and racist attacks.

Obama defended his record, saying he had spoken out on every issue the hecklers raised, from the shooting of Sean Bell in New York to the prosecution of the "Jena Six" in Louisiana to predatory lending targeted at blacks and Hispanics.

"That doesn't mean I'm always going to satisfy the way you guys want me to talk, which gives you the option of voting for someone else, which gives you the option of running for office yourself," Obama replied, amid deafening cheers.

As the candidates campaigned, their staffs sparred via e-mail and on the Internet. McCain's campaign issued a Web ad called "The One" that insinuated Obama views himself as akin to Jesus and Moses and includes a clip of actor Charlton Heston, as Moses, parting the Red Sea.

Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said the ad was one of McCain's "juvenile antics."

McCain told reporters the attack was made in jest. "We were having some fun with our supporters that we sent it out to," he said.

Reuters : U.S. and Iraq scale back security deal plans: W.Post

U.S. and Iraq scale back security deal plans: W.Post

By Dean Yates | July 13, 2008

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have ended efforts to reach a formal security pact before President George W. Bush leaves office in favor of an interim deal, the Washington Post said on Sunday, citing senior U.S. officials.

The two sides had been negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement that would provide a legal basis for U.S. troops to remain when a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

But in the past week Iraqi leaders have spoken of only agreeing what they call a memorandum of understanding. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has also raised for the first time the prospect of setting a timetable for U.S. troops to leave Iraq.

The Washington Post quoted one U.S. official close to the negotiations as saying "we are talking about dates", even though Bush has previously rebuffed calls for a timetable.

Iraq is a major issue in November's presidential election battle between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. McCain supports the Bush administration's current strategy, while Obama has called for a timetable for withdrawal.

The Post said the "bridge" security document would be limited in both time and scope and would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue once the U.N. mandate ended.

Iraq has rejected a number of Washington's demands, insisting they infringe on the country's sovereignty.

The document now under discussion with Iraq was likely to cover only 2009, the Post said.

Negotiators expected it to include a "time horizon", with specific goals for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Baghdad and other cities and installations, it added.

The fixed dates are likely to include caveats referring to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over security. Some Iraqi officials themselves have said any timetable would be determined by security conditions on the ground.

PRESSURE

There is strong domestic pressure in Iraq to set dates for a withdrawal of U.S. forces, especially with violence at a four-year low and with Iraqi security forces getting larger and taking the lead in more security operations.

Maliki's political opponents would also likely try to exploit the issue of an undefined U.S. troop presence in provincial elections later this year.

The most contentious unresolved issue was the legal immunity of U.S. troops in Iraq, the Post reported.

U.S. officials have said this is non-negotiable. But Iraq's deputy parliament speaker has said lawmakers would probably veto any deal that gave U.S. soldiers immunity from Iraqi law.

The Bush administration has always opposed setting any withdrawal timetable, saying to do so would allow militant groups to lie low and wait until U.S. troops in Iraq have left.

U.S. troop levels are already being cut, with the last of five additional combat brigades Bush deployed last year expected to pull out this month. That will leave 15 combat brigades in Iraq, or around 140,000 soldiers.

Washington was considering withdrawing additional troops beginning in September, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing administration and military officials.

The withdrawal stemmed partly from the need for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight the rising insurgency by the Taliban and other fighters.

No final decisions had been made, but up to three combat brigades in Iraq could be withdrawn, or slated for withdrawal, by the end of the administration in January, the Times said.

The White House declined to discuss the withdrawals, but spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the newspaper that while Bush hoped to bring more troops home, he would await recommendations in September from General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, the Times said.

(Additional reporting by Christopher Michaud in New York; Editing by Catherine Evans)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

WaPo : McCain Responds to Maliki's Call for an Iraq Withdrawal Timetable

McCain Responds to Maliki's Call for an Iraq Withdrawal Timetable

By Michael D. Shear | July 8, 2008

Sen. John McCain, who has repeatedly derided anyone who advocated a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, now suddenly finds himself in a political box as the American-backed Iraqi leadership yesterday raised the prospect of exactly that.

For the first time on Monday, Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement from his office that the two countries should consider deciding the future of American troops with "a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."

McCain was silent on the comments Monday. But today, his top foreign policy adviser declined to criticize Maliki or distance McCain from him. And they sought to portray Maliki's comments as consistent with the Republican nominee's long-standing position.

"Senator McCain has always said that conditions on the ground -- including the security threats posed by extremists and terrorists, and the ability of Iraqi forces to meet those threats -- would be key determinants in U.S. force levels," said adviser Randy Scheunemann, who criticized Sen. Barack Obama's "constantly shifting positions" on Iraq.

But McCain's position on the question of a specific timetable for withdrawal has been shifting as the candidate moved from the Republican primary into the general election.

In speeches, town hall meetings, interviews and campaign commercials, McCain has said a timetable would provide terrorists the knowledge of how long they have to wait until American troops are gone. He has repeatedly said that setting a date for withdrawal would lead to "chaos, genocide and we will be back with greater sacrifice."

His rhetoric has been withering and aimed at both Democrats and Republicans. During the waning days of the GOP primary, he eviscerated former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for a comment that McCain said amounted to support for a timetable.

Romney disputed that, but the damage to his candidacy was unmistakable. Later, McCain turned his fire on Democrats, including Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, accusing them of endangering Americans by advocating a specific timetable for withdrawal.

"It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal," he said in a California speech.

In that speech, McCain offered his "vision" for 2013, by which time he said most of the troops would be gone from Iraq. That was quickly seen by many observers as a timetable for withdrawal by that date.

But immediately after the speech, McCain disputed the idea that he was setting a firm date for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, telling reporters that he is "promising that we will succeed in Iraq" but not promising that troops will come home if that success has not materialized.

"I'm not putting a date on it. It could be next month. It could be next year," he told reporters on the Straight Talk Express bus. "I said by the end of my first term we will have succeeded in Iraq.... This is what I want to achieve. This is what I believe is achievable."

McCain fought Democratic attempts in Congress to legislate the withdrawal of troops. And he famously said troops might be in Iraq for as long as 100 years, though he says that referred to a Korea-like presence, not active fighting like that occurring now.

On Tuesday, McCain's campaign declined to respond directly to the question of whether he now supports the idea of setting a date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

Speaking on MSNBC Tuesday morning, McCain said that "The fact is that we and the Iraqis will deal in what is in the national security interests of both countries. And there is no reason to assume that the Iraqis aren't going to act in what they perceive as their national
interest. I believe we will enact ours and I believe we will all come home."

AFP : Iraq to reject US deal without pullout timetable

Iraq to reject US deal without pullout timetable

July 8, 2008

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq said on Tuesday it will not reach any security pact with Washington unless it sets a date for the pullout of US-led foreign troops, a proposal turned down by US President George W. Bush.

The Shiite-led government's demand -- which was swiftly rejected by Washington -- underlines Iraq's new tougher stand in complex negotiations aimed at striking a security deal more than five years after the US-led invasion.

"We will not accept any memorandum of understanding if it does not give a specific date for a complete withdrawal of foreign troops," national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told reporters in the holy city of Najaf.

Baghdad and Washington are negotiating a deal that would see the presence of US-led forces beyond 2008 when the UN mandate which provides the legal basis for a foreign troop presence in Iraq expires.

The security pact, also known as Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), has to be signed by July 31 according to a previous agreement between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, but it has provoked strong opposition in Iraq.

And the US State Department rejected the Iraqi demand for a specific timetable.

"The US government and the government of Iraq are in agreement that we, the US government, we want to withdraw, we will withdraw. However, that decision will be conditions-based," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said.

On Monday, Maliki told Arab ambassadors in Abu Dhabi that he was seeking a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of the security agreement.

"The direction we are taking is to have a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to have a timetable for their withdrawal," Maliki was quoted as saying.

But Rubaie said it was proving "very difficult" to set a date.

"The Iraqi government has spoken about its date, while the foreign party has spoken about its date," he said. "Until now we have not arrived at an agreement on this issue."

On Monday, the White House reacted to Maliki's comments by saying it was not negotiating a "hard date" for a US withdrawal from Iraq but it did not rule out discussions on "time-frames" with Baghdad.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the talks were aimed at reaching agreement on a framework for future US-Iraqi relations and on the arrangements to govern the US military presence.

"It is important to understand that these are not talks on a hard date for a withdrawal," he said. "When you make an agreement," he added, however, "that doesn't mean that there won't be some understanding of time-frames."

The negotiations have been more difficult than expected, and the prospect of an agreement in the final months of the Bush administration has aroused controversy in political circles in both Iraq and the United States.

Shiite and Sunni politicians have raised objections, and Democrats in the US Congress have expressed fears that any agreement would tie the hands of the next president.

The sticking points have been the duration of a defence pact, how many bases Washington should retain, what powers the US military should continue to hold to detain Iraqis, and what immunity US troops should have.

The negotiations come amid a marked improvement in the security situation in Iraq that has allowed a drawdown of US forces, which now number 146,000, down from over 160,000.

On Tuesday, Republican White House candidate John McCain warned that security conditions must dictate troop withdrawals.

But his Democratic foe Barack Obama, an early opponent of the war who wants to pull out most combat troops within 16 months, said it was encouraging that Iraq now wanted to work out a timetable for withdrawal.

"We will withdraw, but... the victory we have achieved so far is fragile and (the redeployment) has to be dictated by events and on the ground," McCain said in an interview with MSNBC.

Obama said Maliki's remarks were in line with his own policy.

"I think it's encouraging... that the prime minister himself now acknowledges that in cooperation with Iraq, it's time for American forces to start sending out a timeframe for the withdrawal."

AFP : McCain, Obama at odds over Iraqi withdrawal demand

McCain, Obama at odds over Iraqi withdrawal demand

July 8, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraq's hardening demand for a pullout deadline for US troops on Tuesday sent shockwaves through the White House campaign, putting Republican hopeful John McCain on the defensive.

McCain, who says it is too early to leave Iraq, said US pull-backs must be dictated by security conditions, after Democrat Barack Obama said the Iraqi government now shared his desire for a timetable for withdrawals.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that Iraq was seeking such an arrangement in talks with Washington on the future US force structure in the country.

Iraq hardened its position on Tuesday, saying it would reject any security pact with Washington unless it set a date for the pullout of US-led foreign soldiers -- a condition turned down by President George W. Bush.

But McCain, who has made staunch support for the US troop "surge" escalation strategy a centerpiece of his campaign, said that recent security gains should not be put at risk by an artificial timetable.

"The Iraqis have made it very clear, including the meetings I had with the president and foreign minister of Iraq, that it is based on conditions on the ground," McCain said in an interview with MSNBC.

"I have always said we will come home with honor and with victory and not through a set timetable," he said, adding that Iraqis would act in their national interest and the United States would act in its own interests.

"We will withdraw, but ... the victory we have achieved so far is fragile and (the redeployment) has to be dictated by events and on the ground," McCain said, mirroring the Pentagon's line on the issue.

The Obama campaign responded by bringing up a comment by McCain from 2004, when he said that if a sovereign Iraqi government asked American forces to quit Iraq, "it's obvious we would have to leave."

"The American people need a strategy for succeeding in Iraq, not just a strategy for staying," said Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Rice.

"John McCain's stubborn refusal to adjust to events on the ground just shows that he has no plan to end this war," she said.

Obama and McCain have been waging a fierce political battle over their plans for US policy in Iraq, an issue that looks set to dominate the presidency of whichever of them emerges triumphant from November's general election.

McCain has said he would aim to get US troops out of Iraq by 2013, but said on one occasion repeatedly used by the Obama campaign that he would be prepared to stay 100 years in a peacekeeping capacity.

Obama has pledged to get US combat troops out within 16 months, at the rate of one or two brigades a month, and this week denied claims he was wavering on that undertaking in the light of security gains in the country.

On Monday, Obama cast Maliki's remarks as in line with his own policy on Iraq, which McCain has branded a strategy for defeat.

"I think that his statement is consistent with my view about how withdrawals should proceed," the Illinois senator told reporters in St. Louis, Missouri.

"I think it's encouraging ... that the prime minister himself now acknowledges that in cooperation with Iraq, it's time for American forces to start sending out a timeframe for the withdrawal.

"I hope that this administration as well as John McCain is listening to what Prime Minister al-Maliki has to say."

Maliki told Arab ambassadors in Abu Dhabi on Monday he was pressing for such a timetable in negotiations with Washington on an agreement on the status of US forces in Iraq beyond 2008.

On Tuesday, national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie stiffened the Iraq stand.

"We will not accept any memorandum of understanding if it does not give a specific date for a complete withdrawal of foreign troops," he told reporters in the holy city of Najaf.

Rubaie said it was proving "very difficult" to set such a date.

Baghdad and Washington are negotiating a deal that would see the presence of US-led forces in Iraq beyond 2008 when the United Nations mandate which provides the legal basis for a foreign troop presence in Iraq expires.

The security pact, also known as Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), has to be signed by July 31 according to a previous agreement between Bush and Maliki.

CBS : McCain Responds to Maliki’s Timetable for Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

McCain Responds to Maliki’s Timetable for Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

by John Bentley | July 8, 2008

(PITTSBURGH) – The U.S. will withdraw its troops from Iraq “with honor, not according to a set timetable,” John McCain said today, in response to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issuing a statement that said the two countries should “put a timetable on their withdrawal."

“We will be able to withdraw with honor, and I am sure that it will be dictated by the situation on the ground,” McCain said. “I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about, since he has told me that for the many meetings we have had."

Barack Obama’s campaign criticized McCain earlier today for not placing more of the burden for the war in Iraq on the Iraqi government. "It's time for John McCain to explain why he refuses to ask Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their own future, and why he has completely changed his own stated position that he would leave Iraq when the Iraqis ask us to,” said Susan Rice, Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser. “The American people need a strategy for succeeding in Iraq, not just a strategy for staying, and John McCain's stubborn refusal to adjust to events on the ground just shows that he has no plan to end this war."

McCain was also asked about a recent report by the Associated Press indicating U.S. exports to Iran have risen tenfold, with the largest export being cigarettes. Before the reporter could finish the question, McCain jumped in and said, "Maybe that’s a way of killing them." He quickly added "I meant that as a joke," and said he was unfamiliar with the report and would have a better answer tomorrow.

Bloomberg : U.S. Rejects Iraqi Demand for Timetable on Troop Withdrawal

U.S. Rejects Iraqi Demand for Timetable on Troop Withdrawal

By Ed Johnson and Camilla Hall | (Bloomberg) | July 9, 2008

The U.S. government rejected calls by Iraq to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from the country and said the planned reduction in force levels will be dictated by conditions on the ground.

The U.S. and Iraq are negotiating an agreement that will lay the legal boundaries for the operation of coalition forces after their United Nations mandate expires at the end of December.

"We want to withdraw, we will withdraw," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told reporters in Washington yesterday. "However, that decision will be conditions-based."

About 150,000 U.S. soldiers remain in the country, down from a peak of 165,000 at the end of 2007. The last of the five combat brigades sent to the country last year by President George W. Bush as part of a so-called surge to improve security is preparing to come home this month.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops as part of the security pact, scheduled to be agreed on by the end of July.

Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said yesterday the country is seeking a "timeline" for the duration of U.S. fighting operations in the country.

"We are making progress and are committed to departing, as evidenced by the fact that we have transferred over half of the country's provinces to provisional Iraqi control," said Gallegos, according to a transcript. "We're looking at conditions, not calendars here."

The pull back is set in the context of November's U.S. presidential election. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has made opposition to the Iraq war and a promise to bring home more troops a key plank of his platform. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, backed the troop surge and says Bush's strategy is working.

The U.S. has conceded to Iraqi demands to lift immunity for private contractors in the country. Iraq has said that it won't accept permanent U.S. bases and won't be used as a staging ground for attacks on neighboring countries.

Reuters : Obama and McCain have "righteous" problems

Obama and McCain have "righteous" problems

By Ed Stoddard - Analysis | May 27, 2008

DALLAS (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain has a "Religious Right" problem. His likely Democratic rival, Barack Obama, has a Rev. Wright problem.

In a country where high levels of belief and church attendance often translate into a major role for religion in election campaigns, analysts say faith may well be a poisoned chalice for the likely contenders in the November White House race.

The faith problem for Obama, who would be the first black president and is within striking distance of the Democratic nomination, stems from voter anger over anti-American sermons by his former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wright has said the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. government had a hand in spreading AIDS to harm blacks.

Obama has publicly severed ties with Wright but opinion polls persistently show the relationship matters to some voters.

McCain's trouble lies with the Republican Party's conservative evangelical base, the so-called Religious Right, which rallied behind President George W. Bush but has been less than enthusiastic about McCain because of his past support for stem-cell research and his failure to back a federal ban on gay marriage.

"The religious right challenge to McCain is far more significant and problematic for his candidacy than the Rev. Wright problem for Obama. The reason is because religiously committed Christians are fundamental to a Republican winning the White House," said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston and a noted expert on faith and politics.

"That is not the case for Democratic candidates, in fact quite the opposite. The so-called secularist wing of American politics is part of the core of Democratic support and especially Obama support," he said.

But that does not mean Obama can exorcise the ghost of Wright, and Lindsay said it could haunt him in swing states -- those states that often switch from one party to the other and where the margin of victory in presidential elections is often narrow.

"I think the Wright controversy will continue to plague Obama's candidacy in swing states where religious voters can make a difference like Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania."

Polls of voters taken after Tuesday's Kentucky Democratic primary, which Hillary Clinton won easily in what many see as one of her last stands, showed that more than 50 percent of those who voted thought Obama shared Wright's views.

This highlights the scope of the Wright problem for Obama among Clinton's white, working class and often church-going supporters in swing states -- voters who could be up for grabs in an Obama-McCain showdown.

CAN MCCAIN REAP THE WRIGHT STUFF?

But can McCain reap what Wright has sown?

Many of the conservative evangelicals whom McCain needs to woo are staunchly patriotic and are enraged by Wright's inflammatory statements. That could help divert attention from McCain's perceived drawbacks.

"I don't think the McCain campaign will dwell on it but the rest of the Republican machinery will try and keep the Rev. Wright controversy at a low boil," said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

McCain also has positions and qualities that many conservative Christians find appealing, such as his consistent opposition to abortion and his status as a military hero and former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

But Obama's ease at talking about his personal faith -- a trait he shares with Bush -- stands in stark contrast to McCain's obvious discomfort with the subject.

McCain attends a church affiliated with America's largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, but he was raised in the more reserved embrace of the Episcopal faith. Obama is an adult convert to the United Church of Christ and the convert's passion gels easily with his speaking style.

"The political problem Obama faces (because of Wright) can be solved by personalizing the issue of faith," Jillson said.

Obama's campaign also has a faith outreach program aimed at religious voters, which helps dispel false rumors that he is a Muslim.

Clyde Wilcox of Georgetown University in Washington said he saw the Wright issue fading but it has still hurt "because there are people who are looking for a reason to doubt him (Obama) ... But Obama can survive this, he talks so very well about religion and has forcibly distanced himself (from Wright)."

(Editing by Eric Beech)

IHT : On Iraq war anniversary, candidates stake out their differences

On Iraq war anniversary, candidates stake out their differences

By Adam Nagourney | March 18, 2008

WASHINGTON: This week's fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq provoked an intense exchange over the war among the three presidential candidates, illustrating the deep divisions over how to proceed there even as the violence has ebbed. The exchange left little doubt that the issue would be a major area of difference between the two parties this fall.

Though the milestone could have easily been overshadowed by the crisis on Wall Street, Senators John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama aggressively seized on Iraq in their campaigning Monday. That they did so, in the face of risks for each of them in the handling of the issue, was evidence of the large role all sides believe the war will continue to play in months ahead, even as the weakening economy takes center stage.

Of the three, Clinton, Democrat of New York, moved the most aggressively, and perhaps most unexpectedly, given the extent to which her vote in 2002 to authorize the war has caused her problems with Democratic primary voters.

She delivered a speech in Washington in which she renewed her pledge to begin withdrawing troops within 60 days of becoming president. But she also used her platform to attack both Obama, who she again said had been inconsistent on the war, and McCain.

McCain, the Arizona Republican who has championed the war and was long an advocate of the eventual policy of increasing the American troop presence in Iraq, was in Baghdad to mark the anniversary and said in an interview there that Clinton's approach was a prescription for defeat at the hands of Al Qaeda.

Obama, Democrat of Illinois, engaged Clinton for challenging the depth of his opposition to the war. He talked again of having spoken out against it from the outset, a distinction that has served him well in the primaries. Obama has been parrying criticism from Clinton and McCain, who have similarly questioned his credentials to be commander in chief.

While Iraq may have faded from public consciousness a bit, in reflection of a drop in the number of casualties and rising concern about the economy, it remains a politically defining issue for both parties, one sure to shape the arguments about national security this fall. The day's back-and-forth amounted to a preview of that debate.

"Despite the evidence, President Bush is determined to continue his failed policy in Iraq until he leaves office," Clinton said at a lightly attended speech at George Washington University. "And Senator McCain will gladly accept the torch and stay the course, keeping troops in Iraq for 100 more years if necessary.

"They both want to keep us tied to another country's civil war, a war we cannot win. And that, in a nutshell, is the Bush-McCain Iraq policy: Don't learn from your mistakes - repeat them."

Clinton argued that the troop "surge" advocated by McCain had failed to produce the kind of change the White House promised, as evinced by the fact that the troop level in Iraq at the end of the surge will be the same as at the beginning.

Talking to CNN in Baghdad, McCain, who has long said that his candidacy could rise or fall on what happens in Iraq, maintained that Clinton "obviously does not understand or appreciate the progress that has been made on the ground." But more tellingly, he returned to what has been the main Republican argument against Democrats since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, suggesting that they would not protect the nation from terrorism.

"If Mrs. Clinton's plan to begin withdrawal in 60 days is enacted," he said, "I just think what that means is Al Qaeda wins."

Clinton sought to make a case that Obama could not be counted on to withdraw American forces as rapidly as possible. She said he had not taken action in the Senate to stop the war and pointed to remarks by Samantha Power, who stepped down this month as an Obama foreign policy adviser after calling Clinton a "monster" and suggesting that as president, Obama would not necessarily abide by the troop withdrawal schedule he has laid out as a presidential candidate.

In an interview with the BBC, Power had said that Obama's pledge to withdraw one or two combat brigades per month was "a best-case scenario," not necessarily what could be achieved should he take office.

"One choice in this election is Senator McCain, who is willing to keep this war going for 100 years," Clinton said. "You can count on him to do that. Another choice is Senator Obama, who has promised to bring combat troops out in 16 months. But according to his foreign policy adviser, you can't count on him to do that."

Obama responded at a town hall meeting in Monaca, Pennsylvania.

"Let me be absolutely clear: I opposed this war in 2002, in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007," he said, speaking over the crowd's applause. "I have been consistent in saying we have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. I've been clear that this was a strategic error, unlike Senator Clinton, who has voted for this war and has never taken responsibility for it."

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Reuters : Iraq invasion was "successful endeavor": Cheney

Iraq invasion was "successful endeavor": Cheney

By Tabassum Zakaria | March 17, 2008

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavor" during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people.

"If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort," Cheney, an architect of the invasion, said after meeting Iraqi leaders.

The Iraq war is a major issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Entering its sixth year this week, it has cost the United States $500 billion. U.S. Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton said on Monday the final bill could be $1 trillion.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed. The military said two more soldiers died on Monday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle near Baghdad.

In a northern district of the capital, six children were killed when a mortar round hit their home, Iraq's military said.

Shortly after Cheney spoke, a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up in a cafe in the southern holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, killing 40 people and wounding 71, police and health officials said. Bombs in Baghdad killed four and wounded 13.

"I was talking with a friend and eating bread a few meters away from the cafe. Suddenly I heard a huge explosion and I was thrown to the floor. I saw smoke and bodies," witness Mohammed Kadhem, 39, recounted after the Kerbala blast.

Cheney arrived as Republican presidential candidate John McCain was meeting Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission.

"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation," Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"This visit is important because it comes at a time when there's a great deal of progress taking place in Iraq," Maliki said through a translator.

A poll of 2,000 people from across Iraq, commissioned by international broadcasters including the BBC and U.S. network ABC, found rising optimism among them.

Cheney said there had been a "remarkable turnaround" in security after 30,000 extra U.S. troops were sent to Iraq last year to help quell sectarian violence that threatened civil war.

Despite the improved security, however, some 4 million Iraqis are still displaced, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report on Monday that millions were still deprived of clean water and medical care.

"SURGE WORKING"

Like McCain, Cheney is in Iraq as part of a wider visit to the Middle East. He was due to spend the night at a military base and will also visit Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Turkey and Oman on a nine-day tour.

Both men have been staunch supporters of the U.S. troop build-up or "surge". The U.S. military says violence in Iraq has dropped by 60 percent since last June, although it acknowledges an upsurge in attacks since January.

"The surge is working," McCain told CNN in an interview in Baghdad, countering demands by Democratic presidential candidates Clinton and Barack Obama for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as possible.

McCain and Cheney did not cross paths during the day as the vice president held a series of meetings with Iraqi leaders. He traveled outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone in a heavily armored motorcade to visit Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and powerful Shi'ite political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.

"There is still a lot of difficult work that must be done, but as we move forward the Iraqi people should know that they will have the unwavering support of President Bush and the United States in consolidating their democracy," Cheney said after meeting Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of Iraq's largest Shi'ite political bloc, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Among the political issues Cheney discussed with Iraq's leaders was a stalled hydrocarbon law, stressing that it was important to Iraq's national development, U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker said later.

The law would share revenues from Iraq's vast oil reserves, the world's third largest, but remains blocked because of reluctance to compromise among Iraq's political blocs.

(Additional reporting by Sami al-Jumaili in Kerbala and Mohammed Abbas in Baghdad; writing by Paul Tait and Ross Colvin; editing by Andrew Roche)

CNN : Lieberman: McCain can reunite our country

Lieberman: McCain can reunite our country

* Sen. Joe Lieberman was Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2000
* Lieberman broke with Democrats and became an Independent
* McCain picked up endorsements from The Des Moines Register, The Boston Globe
* McCain tied for second among GOP candidates in New Hampshire

December 17, 2007

(CNN) -- Sen. Joe Lieberman is crossing party lines and endorsing Republican Sen. John McCain for president.

"Being a Republican is important. Being a Democrat is important. But you know what's more important than that? The interest and well-being of the United States of America," the Democrat-turned Independent said in announcing his decision Monday morning in New Hampshire.

"Let's put the United States first again, and John McCain is the man as president who will help us do that," he said.

Lieberman, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2000, said the next president needs to "break through the reflexive partisanship that is poisoning our politics today and stopping us from getting anything done in Washington."

In accepting Lieberman's backing, McCain said, "It is one of the great honors of my political career to have known him, to have worked with him and to have received his endorsement."

The Connecticut senator decided to endorse McCain because he considers him "the most capable to be commander in chief on day one of his administration, and the most capable of uniting the country so that we can prevail against Islamic extremism," a Lieberman aide said earlier.

The Lieberman aide insists the senator does not see this as a "commentary on or an endorsement of the Republican party, only the person."

The endorsement could help emphasize McCain's experience on national security issues, demonstrate his ability to work across party lines and perhaps help persuade Independent voters in New Hampshire to support his 2008 presidential bid, as many of them did during his first campaign in 2000.

McCain also picked up key endorsements this weekend from two of the most influential papers for voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, The Des Moines Register and The Boston Globe.

Lieberman, who broke with the Democratic Party over Iraq, won re-election as an Independent after losing the party's Senate nomination to an anti-war challenger in 2006.

He still caucuses with the Democrats, giving them their razor-thin majority in the chamber. Lieberman chairs the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, and he still attends weekly Democratic strategy meetings. But his adviser said the endorsement appears to be a "hangover" from the 2006 race, when top Democrats backed the Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, rather than support Lieberman's Independent candidacy.

"I have the greatest respect for Joe, but I simply have to disagree with his decision to endorse Senator McCain," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN in a written statement.

Lieberman's office called Reid's office Sunday to inform the Democratic leader of his decision to endorse a Republican, a Reid spokesman said.

In response to the endorsement, Al From, founder and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council, said, "I am very saddened by Senator Lieberman's choice, and profoundly disagree with it. We need to elect a Democratic president in 2008."

Lieberman and McCain co-sponsored the 2002 resolution that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq the following March, and Lieberman has remained a supporter of the nearly 5-year-old war in Iraq at a time when Democratic leaders are trying to bring the conflict to an end.

He had not planned to endorse anyone until after the primary season, but McCain asked for his endorsement a few days after the two men returned from a Thanksgiving trip to Iraq together, the aide said.

A CNN/WMUR poll released last week found McCain tied for second in the New Hampshire, which hosts the first primary of the 2008 presidential race in January.

He and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani both rated 19 percent support among New Hampshire Republicans, while Mitt Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, led the race with 32 percent.

The poll of 354 likely Republican primary voters was conducted from December 6 through December 10. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

IHT : The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

The U.S. is not a 'Christian nation'

RELIGION AND AMERICA I

By Jon Meacham | October 8, 2007

Senator John McCain was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University last year for very long - McCain, who once referred to Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance," was there to receive an honorary degree - but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood.

In a recent interview with Beliefnet.com, McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."

According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state.

The Psalmist advises believers to "put not your trust in princes." The author of Job says that the Lord "shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands." Before Pilate, Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world."

And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus," then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God's eyes between, say, an American and an Australian.

In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter's words in the Acts of the Apostles: "I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him."

The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: He instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.

The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: The document is dated "in the year of our Lord 1787." Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God's authority, but the effort failed.

A pseudonymous opponent of the Connecticut proposal had some fun with the notion of a deity who would, in a sense, be checking the index for his name: "A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution."

Instead, the framers, the opponent wrote in The American Mercury, "come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, not a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it."

While many states maintained established churches and religious tests for office - Massachusetts was the last to disestablish, in 1833 - the federal framers, in their refusal to link civil rights to religious observance or adherence, helped create a culture of religious liberty that ultimately carried the day.

Thomas Jefferson said his bill for religious liberty in Virginia was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu, and infidel of every denomination."

When George Washington was inaugurated in New York in April 1789, Gershom Seixas, the hazan of Shearith Israel, was listed among the city's clergymen (there were 14 in New York at the time) - a sign of acceptance and respect. The next year, Washington wrote the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, saying, "happily the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."

Andrew Jackson resisted bids in the 1820s to form a "Christian party in politics." Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed "Christian amendment" to the Constitution to declare the nation's fealty to Jesus. Theodore Roosevelt defended William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, from religious attacks by supporters of William Jennings Bryan.

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God.

They grounded the founding principle of the nation - that all men are created equal - in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country's tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that "as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," there should be no cause for conflict over differences of "religious opinion" between countries.

The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. McCain is not the only American who would find it useful reading.

Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, is the author of "American Gospel" and "Franklin and Winston."