McCain Blisters Obama on Iraq

Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican U.S. presidential candidate, fired a withering attack against his Democratic rival for his position on the Iraq war.

When it was time to vote to send surge troops to Iraq, McCain said he embraced the new strategy while Senator (Barack) Obama made a different choice, the Arizona Republican said Friday at the 2008 American GI Forum of the United States National Convention in Denver.

He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it, McCain said of the Illinois Democrat. He didn’t just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it.

Senate votes authorizing the surge and emergency war funding provided Obama and McCain a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief, McCain said. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama’s failed.

The surge was successful, McCain said, and the audacity of hopelessness was rejected, he said, poking fun at Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope.

Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge, McCain said. I cannot conceive of a commander in chief making that choice.