McCain, Obama lecture each other on Iraq

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Democratic primary race may still be flux, but Barack Obama and John McCain continue to offer previews of their possible general election match-up. Today, they exchanged barbs over Iraq, which has receded some in the primaries but will surely be a front-burner issue heading into the fall.

It started when McCain responded to Obama's statement in last night's Democratic debate that he would reserve the right to strike against Al Qaeda figures in Iraq after withdrawing American troops from the country.

"Is Senator Obama unaware that Al Qaeda is still present in Iraq, that our forces are successfully fighting them every day, and that his Iraq policy of withdrawal would embolden Al Qaeda and weaken our security?" McCain asked in a statement. "Where is the audacity of hope when it comes to backing the success of our troops all the way to victory in Iraq? What we heard last night was the timidity of despair."

Obama wasn't going to let that one sit out there too long, and he fired back this morning at a big rally on the campus of Ohio State University.

"I’ve got some news for him," Obama said. "There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain took us into a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. They took our eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11, and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

Obama continued, "John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to end so we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, like we should have been doing in the first place. That's the news, John McCain."