McCain criticizes Obama on Iran
WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain raised the specter of a nuclear Iran in a speech yesterday to a pro-Israel group, once again chastising Democrat Barack Obama for his willingness to meet with leaders of Iran and other US foes.
McCain criticized Obama for seeming to suggest that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear program because the United States refuses to engage in presidential-level talks.
McCain said the Clinton administration in particular tried to engage Iran for two years, even lifting some sanctions, to no avail.
"Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before," McCain said as dozens in the audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference laughed.
Obama's campaign said yesterday that McCain supports an Iraq war that has made the United States and Israel less secure.
"He promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said. "He promises sanctions that the Bush administration has been unable to persuade the (United Nations) Security Council to deliver."
In his speech, McCain called for measures aimed at increasing pressure on Iran, such as severely limiting Iranian imports of gasoline, targeted sanctions such as denying visas and freezing assets, and a worldwide campaign to divest from companies doing business with Iran.
He criticized Obama for opposing a measure to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization responsible for killing US troops in Iraq.
McCain has warm relations with the group, which is influential in the Jewish community. His call for sanctions against gasoline imports is a priority that the public affairs committee members plan to lobby for on Capitol Hill later in the week.
In contrast, Obama has worked to reassure Jewish voters who have expressed unease about his candidacy.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
If so, he went out with a final venting of the kind of anger that has punctuated his efforts to put his wife in the White House.
At the end, as he jumped energetically around South Dakota to what were likely to be the final small dots on the Clinton campaign's 2008 electoral map, it was about Bill Clinton and the baggage he had brought to the race as much as it was about Senator Hillary Clinton and her efforts to leave all that behind.
After a weekend in which his aides sought to discredit an article in Vanity Fair that, relying primarily on anonymous sources, raised questions about his judgment, the company he keeps, and whether he was spending time with other women, Bill Clinton unleashed a tirade against the story's author, Todd S. Purdum, a former
According to the Huffington Post website, Bill Clinton, as he worked the rope line at an event here, called Purdum "sleazy," "slimy," and "dishonest."
Speaking to a reporter for the website, he said the article was part of a pattern of media bias against his wife and in favor of her rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama.
By the end of the day, Clinton aides had issued a statement saying that he had been "understandably upset about an outrageously unfair article," but that the language he had used about Purdum "was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Barack Obama has spent about $75 million, more than the amount spent by the entire Republican field, while Hillary Clinton has spent more than $46 million, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project's analysis of data from TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG tracking nearly 328,000 airings of ads.
The study also highlighted the benefits of ad spending while buttressing the Clinton campaign's argument that she won more of the recent primaries while being outspent by Obama.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney was the top ad spender, with nearly $32 million.
FOON RHEE 