McCain Says Policy on Iraq is Unchanged

By David Jackson

WASHINGTON — John McCain and his aides parried Monday with Barack Obama’s campaign over Obama’s contention that the White House is adopting his ideas on dealings with Iraq and Iran.

McCain blasted Obama for opposing the Bush administration’s “surge” in Iraq, saying that the extra troops created a sharp drop in violence and conditions for victory.

“When you win wars, troops come home,” McCain said. “He’s been completely wrong on the issue.”

Over the weekend, the Obama campaign pointed to the Bush administration’s talk about a “general time horizon” to withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq and its dispatching of a high-level State Department official to Geneva to meet with Iranian diplomats last weekend about that country’s nuclear program.

Obama has said he would be willing to meet with Iran’s leader and has been calling for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq since 2006, prior to the surge.

“He said it (the surge) would fail, and he refuses to admit to this day that it succeeded,” McCain said.

The Obama camp disagreed.

“The failure of the McCain-Bush foreign policy has forced John McCain to change his position, and to embrace the very same Obama approaches that he once attacked,” Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.

One former Bush administration official agreed with the Obama camp.

The Bush administration is moving “toward the Obama position,” said John Bolton, Bush’s former United Nations ambassador. For McCain, Bolton said, “the only benefit is that it gives him another opportunity to differentiate himself from Bush.”

Obama is “selectively misinterpreting what in fact is happening,” McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said.

The United States has long worked with its allies to urge Iran to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for economic help, Scheunemann said. The Bush administration’s decision to dispatch Undersecretary of State William Burns to the Iran talks contrasts with Obama’s past statements that he would be willing to meet with the leaders of hostile nations, including that of Iran, Scheunemann said. “The only way you could compare what the Bush administration is doing in its diplomacy with Iran with what Sen. Obama wants to do would be if President Bush invited (Iranian) President Ahmadinejad to Crawford (Texas) for a barbecue,” Scheunemann said.

Obama said in May that any Iranian meeting would be preceded by “preparation,” including lower-level diplomatic contacts.

On Iraq, Scheunemann said the Bush administration is seeking a “goal” but added that withdrawals must be based on improved security conditions. He said Obama is seeking an “unconditional date-driven withdrawal” that is “completely ignorant of conditions on the ground.”

Obama said last week that he would leave a “residual force” in Iraq for “specific missions.”

However, Bush’s moves could well help McCain, said Jon Alterman, who directs the Middle East Program with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. The Bush administration, Alterman said, has been criticized for an overly aggressive tone on foreign policy. So, he said, sending Burns to talk to Iran and discussing troop withdrawals with Iraq can be seen as a move toward the political center.

McCain spent part of his day visiting former president George H.W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.