Ask Obama about his willingness to accept genocide in Iraq

Washington Post:

In dueling appearances on the Sunday talk shows, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama attacked the other's foreign policy and refused to reconsider publicly their earlier positions.

McCain reiterated his view that Obama's policy of favoring a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within two years puts politics before prudent policy.

"Senator Obama doesn't understand. He doesn't understand what's at stake here, and he chose to take a political path that would have helped him get the nomination of his party," McCain said on ABC's "This Week."

Referring to his call last year to increase the number of troops in Iraq, McCain said, "I took a path that I knew was unpopular because I knew we had to win in Iraq. And we are winning in Iraq. And if we'd have done what Senator Obama wanted done, it would have been chaos, genocide, increased Iranian influence, perhaps al-Qaeda establishing a base again."

Obama acknowledged that violence has diminished in Iraq since the troop buildup began -- "more than any of us anticipated," including McCain and President Bush. But he added that it is impossible to know whether that country would be in better shape today if the United States had followed his call to start removing troops.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama said McCain has failed to ask whether it was a smart decision to go into Iraq in the first place and whether a timeline for withdrawal encourages Iraqi factions to cooperate politically.

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We are already missing Tim Russert. He would have played the tape of Obama saying he was willing to accept genocide as the price for withdrawing troops in Iraq. We are talking about something more than just underestimating the progress we would make in Iraq. Obama actually said the surge would make things worse not better and he was willing to risk genocide in removing them. That is not anywhere close to a reasonable or rational policy on Iraq. He was dead wrong and he is trying to change the subject from his bad judgment.

Obama keeps insisting that Afghaistan is the central front of the war but it only became so after al Qaeda's defeat in Iraq. Al Qaeda's leaders made it clear that Iraq was their central front up until it became clear they had lost. McCain is going to have to keep on hammering on this because it is clear that few in teh media are up to the task.