John McCain says Barack Obama's plan for Iraq is misguided. Obama opposed the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, a strategy McCain supported and which he calls a success.
Related.....Barack Obama and John McCain today offered diametrically opposite views of the war in Iraq, even as both called for sending thousands more US troops to Afghanistan.
Democrat Obama declared that the failed policy in Iraq -- which he argued was never the central front in the war on terror -- has distracted attention from the growing terrorist threat in Afghanistan and proves the need to withdraw from Iraq. "If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned," he said in a speech in Washington. "And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan."
But Republican McCain answered that the success of the troop surge in Iraq now allows the US military to increase forces in Afghanistan. "Senator Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards," McCain declared in a speech in Albuquerque, N.M. "It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge -- which Senator Obama opposed -- that we will win in Afghanistan." BOSTON GLOBE
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