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McCain Intensifies Criticism Of Obama

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The Washington Post

Published: July 26, 2008

ASPEN, Colo. - It was a Friday of war and peace for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

He delivered a scathing broadside on the Iraq war policies of his Democratic rival, telling an organization of Hispanic veterans in Denver that Barack Obama has failed the test to become commander in chief and scolding him for the "audacity of hopelessness."

Then a quick flight over the mountains delivered McCain to a more mellow place: a private meeting here with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom he praised as "an inspiration for all of mankind."

McCain's gentle ways with the Dalai Lama, who patted the senator's hand and called him his "old friend" in a brief appearance before reporters, was a jarring contrast to his tough language earlier in the day, when the senator from Arizona stepped up his rhetoric about the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Iraq last year.

Obama opposed that deployment, a position that McCain said Friday would have left "Iraq and our strategic position in the Middle East in ruins, risking a wider war in the near future."

The decision on whether to deploy additional troops "amounted to a real-time test for a future commander in chief," McCain said.

"America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Sen. Obama's failed."

The Obama campaign bristled at the criticism, especially McCain's charge that Obama had voted against funding the troops in the wartime effort.

The campaign said it is literally true, but that the Illinois senator had also voted 10 times to fund the war effort.

Later, in Aspen, McCain called on China to renew talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama and to release Tibetan prisoners.

The United States wants good relations with China, McCain said, "but it does no service to the Chinese government, and certainly no service to the people of China, for the United States and other democracies to pretend that the suppression of human rights in China does not concern us."

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