Obama would swap Iraq war loss for election win...

Obama would swap Iraq war loss for election win: McCain camp

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican John McCain's camp has charged that his Democratic foe Barack Obama would trade defeat in Iraq for an election win, as a fierce new row over the war rocked the White House race.

As tensions mounted ahead of Obama's expected to visit to the war zone, his campaign hit back that McCain was oblivious to the real situation in Iraq and warned voters would not be hoodwinked by "fear-mongering."

Obama stoked the latest row with an opinion piece in the New York Times, in which he pledged to redeploy two combat brigades, or up to 10,000 troops to Afghanistan, and reaffirmed a 16-month troop withdrawal deadline in Iraq.

In response, McCain's foreign policy aide Randy Scheunemann contrasted what he billed as the Arizona senator's principled support for last year's US troop surge with Obama's opposition to the plan and vow to bring troops home.

"Senator Obama continues his search for a political position to protect his flank in an election," Scheunemann told reporters on a conference call.

"Senator McCain said he would rather lose an election than lose a war and see the nation lose a war.

"Senator Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election."

A day before Obama is due to make a major address on Iraq, in Washington, his aides questioned McCain's basic understanding of the war, saying he would prolong what they see as President George W. Bush's failed policies.

"John McCain has no notion of what's going on ... he doesn't get the fact that in fact there is no reasonable prospect of there being a strong central government located in Baghdad," said Democratic Senator Joseph Biden.

And Obama foreign policy aide Susan Rice said the vehemence of the McCain camp's attacks was designed to obscure "the fact that John McCain has been wrong on Iraq from the very beginning."

"That kind of old-school fear mongering is exactly what the American people are tired of and they won't be fooled by," she said, accusing the McCain camp of impugning Obama's character.

In the Times article, Obama pledged to send up to two more combat brigades to the Afghan war, following an upsurge in suicide attacks and insurgent activity, and stood by a mid-2010 deadline to get most soldiers out of Iraq.

"We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in," said Obama, who is expected go to Iraq and Afghanistan soon, though details of his trip have been withheld for security reasons.

"We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 -- two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began."

"I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks," Obama wrote.

McCain backer and Republican senator Lindsey Graham branded Obama's article an "unbelievable, brazen effort by a politician to rewrite history."

"It is clear to any objective observer that what happened in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad became a central struggle in the war on terror," Graham said on a conference call.

Graham also suggested that Obama's war policy dishonored the sacrifices of those killed in the surge effort, which US generals credit with quelling sectarian violence and stabilizing Iraq.

"For us to deny history does a great disservice to those who made history," he said.

"The history that is being made in Iraq now from the surge came at a heavy price and a lot of sacrifice."

Republicans accused Obama of engaging in 'flip-flops' for political gain after he said this month he may "refine" his policies after meeting US commanders in Iraq.

In the New York Times article, Obama again said he was open to making "tactical adjustments," leaving himself some room for maneuver should he be inaugurated president next January.

The McCain campaign also said on Monday that the Arizona senator would make a speech on Afghan war policy later this week.

How can you lose something you've already won?

that's what i don't get

why can't we say "We are victorious, now we leave."

but the answer is obvious: we had no intention of ever leaving in the first place. THAT was the real point of this war.