Marathon Pundit: Another McCain campaign teleconference report

Monday, July 21, 2008

Another McCain campaign teleconference report

I hope I continue to get invited to these John McCain campaign teleconferences. For the second time in a week, Randy Scheunemann, the campaign's senior foreign policy adviser--only this time by himself--spoke on the senator's behalf on the telephone for reporters.

Here some of that he said:

Senator Obama's judgment on Iraq has been universally wrong. He opposed the surge. He predicted it would fail. He said not only would it not decrease sectarian violence, it would likely increase it. Had we followed his course of action there would have been no surge, funding for troops would have been cut off last year. He proposed a withdrawal plan in January 2007 that would have all our troops out of Iraq by March 2008. He rewrote his website on the surge and now he is trying to rewrite history saying he always knew the surge could reduce sectarian violence.

Had we followed Senator Obama's advice in fact he would not be in Iraq today because Iraq would be in chaos. He couldn't visit Basra as he's doing today because Basra would be under the control of Iranian backed killers rather than under the control of the Iraqi government and coalition forces. So what we're seeing today is a real watershed moment for Senator Obama. Is he going to listen to our commanders in the field and talk about and listen to them when they say any withdrawal must be based on conditions or is he stubbornly adhere to his politically motivated plan to have an unconditional withdrawal driven only by dates, arbitrary dates, rather than conditions on the ground?

My guess is that Obama will listen to The Daily Kos crowd in regards to what to do in Iraq. And Afghanistan.
Some more commons sense from Scheunemann:

Senator Obama decided some months ago when he was running for the nomination that 16-months was the time period that all troops should be withdrawn. Not 12 months, not 14, not 18, but 16. That's an artificial date and it is completely ignorant of conditions on the ground and the effect that it would have both on our ability to withdraw as well as the ability to have sustainable security in Iraq in the aftermath.