Obama and McCain trade fire over troop surge, withdrawalSFlb

The Democratic candidate said the decline in violence in Iraq was brought about by several factors.

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday that he had failed to understand how much violence would decrease this year in Iraq, but he contended that President Bush and Sen. John McCain, the Republicans’ presumptive presidential candidate, had made the same mistake.

Meanwhile, McCain insisted in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that he had not shifted his support of an American exit in 2010, despite comments he made Friday that the 16-month withdrawal plan espoused by Iraq’s prime minister “is a pretty good timetable.”

Addressing what has become one of his most difficult campaign issues, Obama said that the violence “has gone down more than any of us have anticipated, including President Bush and John McCain.”

But the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” contended that the decline was brought about not just by the U.S. troop increase, but also by a combination of factors, including Iraqi Sunnis’ decision to turn against al-Qaida.

“To try to single out a single factor in a messy situation is not accurate,” he said, while also emphasizing that U.S. combat forces had made “an enormous difference.”

The Illinois senator, who returned to the United States late Saturday after a week in South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, has struggled to explain his opposition to a troop increase, strongly supported by McCain, that has come to be viewed widely as an important contributor to improved Iraqi security.

Obama also sought to rebut charges that his speech in Berlin, to an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 200,000 people, was largely free of substance or any specifics that would displease his audience.

He pointed out that he had called on Germany to do more in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had decried the reflexive anti-Americanism in Europe.

“That wasn’t an applause line in Germany,” he said.

Despite his call for Germany to do more on joint security efforts, he went easy on the German government, saying that Chancellor Angela Merkel “is doing as much as she can” to step up German military contributions to Afghanistan “given the politics in her country.”

Obama, who often has faulted the Bush administration for failing to mobilize a full effort for Middle East peace until 2007, praised the Bush team for its recent efforts toward creation of a Palestinian state.

He said that the administration has “moved the ball forward” since the autumn, although it might leave an unfinished job that the next president will have to “move quickly” to complete. He said the next president also would need to move quickly to deal with the threat from Iran’s nuclear program.

McCain’s comments on the timetable for withdrawal from Iraq were prompted by comments in a CNN interview Friday in which he had been asked to explain why Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now generally supported the 16-month timetable endorsed by Obama.

Al-Maliki “said it’s a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground,” McCain said in the Friday interview. “I think it’s a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground.”

Obama’s campaign hailed the comment as a sign that McCain, like al-Maliki, was moving toward the Democrat’s position.

But McCain insisted on the ABC program that he would favor any timetable as long as it was justified by improved conditions in Iraq.

“I like six months, three months, two months. I like yesterday. I like yesterday, OK? That seems really good to me. But the fact is, the conditions on the ground have not dictated it,” he said.

The Arizona senator said he was not questioning Obama’s patriotism last week when he charged that the Democrat had been willing to lose the war if it helped him with the political campaign.

“I’m not questioning his patriotism. I’m questioning his actions,” McCain said. “All I’m saying is, he does not understand. ... He made the decision that was political, in order to help him win the nomination of his party.”

McCain strongly defended his original support for the war, which has become another key point of contention between the two.

As had been predicted in 2003, “We were greeted as liberators,” he insisted. He added, though, that the Bush administration mishandled the war “in a way that was so harmful that I stood up against it.”