Campaign Jousting Returns to Iraq War

Obama has said that if he is elected, he will begin to remove troops immediately. Under his plan, all combat brigades would leave the country within 16 months, but some troops would remain to protect the U.S. Embassy and carry out operations against al-Qaeda.

McCain thinks that the United States cannot leave until al-Qaeda is defeated and Iraqi forces have been trained to maintain order.

Last night at a town hall meeting in Greendale, Wis., McCain told an audience the "surge" is working, pointing to Basra, Mosul and Sadr City as "quiet." But opponents noted that three suicide bombings in and around Mosul yesterday had left 30 Iraqis dead.

The GOP has methodically pushed foreign policy to the forefront, as part of a broader campaign to portray Obama as a neophyte who is prone to exaggerations and outright falsehoods to embellish his résumé. The RNC excoriated Obama yesterday for saying his great-uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp when he meant Buchenwald; for saying the civil rights march on Selma had brought his parents together, when he was born four years before it; and even for saying he had quickly learned the Indonesian language as a child, when teachers recalled his struggles.

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove called him "a candidate who instinctively resorts to parsing, evasions and misdirections" in a Wall Street Journal column yesterday.

Obama aides said yesterday that the candidate is considering a trip to Iraq, to "see how it is that we can begin to carefully remove [the troops] and carefully bring them back to their families," as Gibbs put it. As far back as 2007, Obama had been planning to travel abroad if he wrapped up the nomination. Instead, he spent much of the past two years locked in a battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

That only elicited a fresh retort from the McCain campaign. "It is disappointing that Senator Obama would travel to Iraq for the first time in over two years, and instead of listening and learning from our troops, he would insist upon an immediate withdrawal," said spokesman Brian Rogers.

Such trips are heavily stage-managed by the Defense Department to control the message and the imagery, warned Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), who has visited four times. McCain's heavily guarded visit to a Baghdad market last year was widely ridiculed.

Democrats counseled Obama against taking the bait. "Frankly, his policy is about bringing our troops home sooner and safer, and that is a message resonating with the American people," Tauscher said. "I wouldn't do anything to validate Senator McCain's attempt to change the subject and create this red-herring debate."