Barack Obama savaged his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wednesday for running a dishonourable campaign that aides to the Democrat said smacked of ”reckless” desperation.
Obama said he and McCain may differ on whether to pull out of Iraq, ”but don’t you dare suggest I am less patriotic than you or I have political motivations in taking the positions I take”.
In some of the most vehement attacks yet heaped on the Arizona senator by the Obama camp during this White House campaign, the Illinois senator said he honoured McCain’s public service but not the manner of his electioneering.
The attacks coincided with a new poll suggesting McCain has overhauled Obama among voters nationally, heading into next week’s Democratic convention and the formal start of two months of furious electioneering climaxing on November 4.
McCain, however, denied he has been casting aspersions on Obama’s patriotism, and accused his Democratic foe of getting ”testy” about their sparring over Iraq.
Addressing a raucous rally at a high school attended by 2 200 people with 200 more shut outside, Obama said his opponents ”just make stuff up” about his religious faith or his patriotism, and portray him as ”risky and scary”.
”I’m skinny but I’m tough. We will hit back hard with the truth. We will answer any lies that are made and we intend to win this election,” he said.
”We can’t have the same kind of shoot-first and aim second [approach] in our foreign policy. We’ve got to have some kind of judgement in our foreign policy and restore our alliances around the world,” Obama added.
Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, meanwhile, vied to demolish McCain’s attempts to cast himself as more trustworthy than Obama in a time of international crisis.
McCain’s ”tendency is to shoot first and to ask questions later”, she said on a conference call alongside former White House anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who called the Republican ”trigger-happy” and ”reckless”.
McCain, according to Rice, ”cheer-led [President George] Bush’s decision to take our eye off the ball and start a war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11”.
”This is a record that belies anything approaching sound judgement,” she said.
Clarke added that ”he has consistently been quick-draw McCain here on every issue. His first instinct is to rattle sabres and look for a military solution.”
‘I am questioning his judgement’
Obama has turned noticeably more pugnacious heading into the Democratic convention, where the 47-year-old freshman senator will be proclaimed his party’s nominee to take on McCain and the vaunted Republican machine.
”John McCain is a decorated war hero,” Obama said. ”And the Republicans haven’t been very good at governing, but they’re very good at running negative ads.”
”It’s important we strip away all the political nonsense and just understand what’s at stake in this election,” he said, hammering McCain for pledging to extend the unpopular Bush’s economic policies.
McCain (71), whose own nominating convention comes in the first week of September, has been hammering Obama for weeks over national security and, more recently, the crisis in Georgia.
There were new signs on Wednesday that the McCain strategy may be paying off, with a George Washington University national battleground poll finding the Republican with a slim one percentage point lead over Obama.
Other recent polls have shown the race as a statistical tie, and suggest McCain has trimmed away at Obama’s former small leads.
The Arizona senator told supporters in New Mexico that Obama had been wrong to oppose the United States troop ”surge” strategy in Iraq, which Republicans credit with quelling raging violence.
”Yesterday [Tuesday], Senator Obama got a little testy on this issue; he said I am questioning his patriotism,” McCain said at a town hall meeting.
”Let me be very clear, I am not questioning his patriotism, I am questioning his judgement. Senator Obama has made it clear he values withdrawal from Iraq above victory in Iraq.
”He has made these decisions not because he doesn’t love America but because he doesn’t think it matters whether America wins or loses.”
McCain, a vocal supporter of the surge strategy introduced last year, opposes what he calls artificial timetables for troop withdrawals from Iraq, which he says would squander recent US security gains.
Obama argues McCain wants to keep US troops bogged down indefinitely in Iraq, and has vowed to begin troop withdrawals with the goal of getting most US combat soldiers out of the country within 16 months. — AFP
