MCCain drives Democrats to silliness over war

LA Times:

The growing likelihood that Sen. John McCain will win the Republican presidential nomination has sparked renewed debate between the Democratic front-runners over the Iraq war -- and over who possesses the strongest credentials to challenge a war hero for the duties of commander in chief.

The issue provoked one of the sharpest moments in Thursday's Democratic debate in Los Angeles, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York argued that the party's eventual nominee would need sufficient "gravitas" to persuade American voters that he or she can be a strong leader while arguing for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

The jousting continued Friday when a top military advisor to Clinton's rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, ridiculed Clinton's implication that she would offer voters the better credentials.

The advisor, retired Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, said in a telephone interview that Obama has "real gravitas, not artificially created, focus-grouped, poll-directed, rehearsed gravitas."

He also said Obama "doesn't go on television and have crying fits; he isn't discovering his voice at the age of 60" -- references to Clinton's much-publicized show of emotion during the New Hampshire primary campaign and her speech after winning the contest in which she declared that she had "found my voice."

McPeak later retracted his remarks, and the Obama camp disassociated itself from them.

McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush and President Clinton, charged in his initial comments that Clinton's remark about gravitas was "the kind of lie that has one element of truth."

"Yes, gravitas is important, but a lot of the rest [of Clinton's argument] is obfuscation," he said. "It's almost like if you say that you have gravitas, you had it from being Bill Clinton's wife for eight years and Barack Obama had never earned it from his life experience."

An Obama campaign aide was on the line during the interview. Minutes later, McPeak called back to say he regretted his remarks and that he has "high regard" for Hillary Clinton.

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A Clinton spokesman, Phil Singer, called it "unfortunate" that McPeak's retraction "was motivated out of concern about the political impact of his words as opposed to the fact that they were simply offensive."

The battle over who best could press the Democratic case on foreign policy is one of the key ways that Obama and Clinton are trying to distinguish themselves as they campaign for convention delegates in Tuesday's voting in California and more than 20 other states.

Both Clinton and Obama have criticized McCain for his past comments that the United States likely would have to maintain a military presence in Iraq for many years. At Thursday's debate, both offered assurances that they would start troop withdrawals within the first months of their presidencies.

McCain, a vocal supporter of President Bush's so-called surge strategy in Iraq, has charged that the Democrats have been pushing a "false argument" in focusing so much attention on removing troops from Iraq.

Noting that the United States has maintained a lengthy military presence in South Korea, he said during a GOP presidential candidate debate Wednesday near Simi Valley that "we are going to be [in Iraq] for some period of time, but it's American casualties, not American presence" that should be the main concern.

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Gravitas is a false choice on the issue of the war. The choice is whether you want to win or lose and the Democrats offer another false claim that they can "end" the war when the reality is that all they can do is order a retreat. The war will go on because the enemy has not yet lost hope and the Democrats are too busy giving them hope.