Democratic White House hopeful Senator Barack Obama said he might visit Iraq after taking a barrage from Republican candidate Senator John McCain over his single previous trip to the war zone.
Obama, who opposed the war from the start, and accuses McCain of wanting to prolong “failed” US policies, told the New York Times on Wednesday that he was considering an overseas trip after securing the Democratic nomination.
“Iraq would obviously be at the top of the list of stops,” Obama told the paper, but declined McCain’s offer of a joint trip, saying he wanted no part of a “political stunt.”
McCain, an advocate of Bush’s troop surge strategy who has made multiple visits to US troops and commanders, said Obama’s possible visit to Iraq was “long overdue.”
“It’s been 871 days since he was there,” McCain told reporters during a campaign stop in Beverly Hills, California.
“I’m confident that when he goes he will then change his position on the conflict in Iraq, because he will see the success that has been achieved on the ground,” McCain said.
He lashed the first-term senator’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief, saying Obama had only gone to Iraq once just over two years ago.
“This is about leadership and learning,” the Republican said in Reno, Nevada.
McCain, who criticized early US post-war policy, hit out at Obama for failing to sit down in Iraq with US commander General David Petraeus, while offering talks with leaders of Iran.
And he took issue with Obama’s criticisms of his own trips to Iraq, which included one when he walked through a Baghdad market with a heavy US security detail, and the Democrat’s critique of the surge.
“That is a profound misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding of what’s happened in Iraq, and what’s at stake in Iraq,” McCain said. “If we set a date for withdrawal, as Senator Obama wants to do, there will be chaos, there will be genocide, there will be increased Iranian influence there.”
Obama says on the campaign trail he would end the Iraq War next year, and accuses the Iraqi government of failing to take advantage of the US escalation to make political progress.
His spokesman Bill Burton led a counter-attack, saying: “It seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq.”
“Senator Obama challenged the president’s rationale for the war from the start, warning that it would divert resources from Afghanistan and the pursuit of Al-Qaeda and mire us in an endless civil war,” he said.
“Senator McCain stubbornly insists on pursuing the failed Bush policy that continues to cost so much, while Senator Obama believes it’s time to begin a deliberate, careful strategy to remove our troops and compel the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future,” Burton said.
Meanwhile, Senator Hillary Clinton launched an 11th hour bid to deprive Obama of the nomination, five days before the final voting clashes.
Clinton wrote to nearly 800 top party officials or superdelegates to try to persuade them she was more likely to beat McCain.
“I believe I am best prepared to lead this country as president, and best prepared to put together a broad coalition of voters to break the lock Republicans have had on the electoral map,” she wrote.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing