On August 1, Obama gave this policy speech. The BBC and a lot of news agencies mischaracterized it, implying or outright stating he would march in to Pakistan.

From ABC News:

On Wednesday, Obama delivered a major anti-terrorism speech in which he essentially threatened the government of Pakistan that as president he would attack al Qaeda targets in the country with or without the permission of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will,” Obama said.

I’m not so sure that’s a “threat,” but OK. More importantly, click over to page 2 of that link:

Clinton did not take issue with that as an option, but suggested Obama should not have been delivering such messages publicly.

“I am concerned about talking about it,” she said. “I think everyone agrees that our goal should be to capture or kill bin Laden and his lieutenants but how we do it should not be telegraphed and discussed for obvious reasons.”

Clinton didn’t seem to have any problem “talking about” the subject on Wednesday, when interviewed on American Urban Radio News Network.

“I’ve long believed that we needed tougher, smarter action against terrorists by deploying more troops to Afghanistan, and if we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,” she said.

She agrees with what he said, just not the fact that he said it. Brilliant.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Foreign Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.