McCain sharpens attack on Obama

Says Democrat tried to 'legislate' defeat in Iraq Seeks to draw attention from his rival's trip

Senator John McCain greeted a veteran yesterday at the American GI Forum Convention in Denver. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - After days of responding to Senator Barack Obama's overseas tour with off-the-cuff jabs, Senator John McCain yesterday tried a new tactic, delivering a detailed argument accusing his Democratic opponent of favoring an Iraq policy that would have had American troops "retreat under fire."

Obama not only opposed the "surge" of 30,000 troops last year that has lessened the violence in Iraq, McCain said, "but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it."

And that defeat, the presumptive Republican nominee suggested, would have left America "humiliated and weakened" and could have led to genocide in Iraq and a wider war in the Middle East.

McCain's speech in Denver to the American GI Forum, a predominantly Hispanic-American veterans group, appeared designed to explain what he meant when he declared in New Hampshire on Tuesday that Obama was willing to "lose a war to a win a campaign."

Bill Burton, Obama campaign spokesman, called McCain's accusations "angry" and "false," saying that they will "do noth ing" to further the debate on how to proceed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Barack Obama and John McCain may differ over our strategy in Iraq, but they are united in their support for our brave troops and their desire to protect this nation. Senator McCain's constant suggestion otherwise is not worthy of the campaign he claimed he would run or the magnitude of the challenges this nation faces," Burton added.

Obama, appearing earlier yesterday in Paris at a news conference with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, said his overseas trip - including consultations with military commanders and local leaders in Afghanistan and Iraq - deepened his understanding of international issues, but did not change his mind about strategy.

McCain has spent much of the week trying to formulate a response to the massive publicity generated by Obama's tour, which also included stops in Jordan, Israel, Germany, and France. It wraps up today in England.

McCain's campaign tried various strategies, including the release of an Internet video mocking the media for being "in love" with Obama. The Arizona Republican also appeared on network news programs, usually after the anchors interviewed Obama, and made impromptu remarks at venues, including a German restaurant in Ohio and a grocery store in Pennsylvania. McCain had planned to focus on energy and economic issues during the week, but he wound up responding to Obama every day. His scheduled visit to an oil rig off the Louisiana coast to hammer Obama on energy policy was canceled because of Hurricane Dolly.

Yesterday, however, McCain was on the offensive, seeking to present a focused message as he tries to make the war and national security the defining issue of the presidential race. Speaking in the city where Obama will accept the Democratic nomination next month, McCain attempted to lay out the history of how he and Obama dealt with the surge - and what that means for US success in Iraq going forward.

Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of political science and government at Harvard University, said McCain's rhetoric was "much sharper than in previous speeches and comments," designed to take advantage of voter perceptions that he is "ready to lead in the foreign policy arena" in contrast to Obama.

Quoting Obama as saying that the surge had worsened the situation in Iraq and that US troops would fail, McCain repeatedly argued that the Illinois senator bent to popular opinion of the time and lacked the judgment and strength needed in the Oval Office.

"We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat," McCain said yesterday. "All the polls said the surge was unpopular."

McCain said he supported the surge, even though many pundits "said my position would end my hopes of becoming president." The debate "amounted to a real-time test for a future commander in chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed."

By carrying through with the surge, "We rejected the audacity of hopelessness," McCain said, a mocking reference to Obama's best-selling book.

Had Obama's strategy been followed, McCain said, the Iraqi Army would have collapsed, Al Qaeda would have killed Sunni sheikhs who rebelled against the insurgents, and "civil war, genocide, and wider conflict would have been likely. . . . As Iraq descended into chaos, other countries in the Middle East would have come to the aid of their favored factions, and the entire region might have erupted in war."

At the same time, McCain sought to distance himself from the unpopular Bush administration, saying he thought that President Bush had pursued a "mistaken strategy" and that Bush's military commanders gave "phony explanations about how we were winning. I knew we were failing."

The Obama campaign, as it has in the past, responded to McCain's attacks by saying the deeper question is about who had the right judgment on whether to go to war in Iraq at all. McCain supported the war while Obama opposed it. The Obama campaign yesterday commented that McCain had said the war would be short and that Americans would be welcomed as liberators. The campaign also noted that Iraqi leaders said this week that they are generally in line with his 16-month timetable for withdrawing most US troops.

And Obama's campaign highlighted McCain's response, in an interview that aired later yesterday on CNN, that 16 months was "a pretty good timetable," though he quickly added his usual caveat that any pullout has to "based on conditions on the ground."

Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com.