Obama plans Iraq trip

Barack Obama pledged today to visit Iraq and Afghanistan before the November election so he can see first hand the progress of the wars he would inherit if he's elected president.

The presumptive Democratic nominee told reporters after a campaign event in Flint, Mich., that in meeting Iraq's foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari today, he pressed the case for the Iraqi government to pick up more of the tab for the country's reconstruction.

John McCain and the Republicans have been knocking Obama for advocating a withdrawal from Iraq when he hasn't set foot there since January 2006.

“The situation on the ground in Iraq has changed significantly since Barack Obama’s last visit nearly 900 days ago," Blair Latoff, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said in a statement today. "When Obama travels to Iraq, reality will confront him and he will realize that he was wrong to oppose the surge, wrong to continuously ignore our commanders’ suggestions, and wrong to stipulate premature withdrawal. Barack Obama’s fundamental misunderstanding of the success in Iraq is not what America needs in a Commander in Chief.”