Obama blasts Bush, McCain over ‘attacks’
WATERTOWN, South Dakota (CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama slammed President Bush on Friday for launching exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.
He also took a shot at Sen. John McCain for embracing the president’s attacks on Democrats, and suggesting that I wasn’t fit to protect this nation that I love.
So much for civility, Obama said at a town hall meeting in Watertown, noting that McCain had talked about the need for civility in politics earlier Thursday.
Obama was responding to Bush’s remarks in Israel on Thursday that some want to appease the terrorists. White House officials denied Obama was a target of Bush’s remarks. But privately, White House aides indicated the criticism was aimed at various Democrats, including Obama and former President Jimmy Carter.
In speaking at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state, Bush said, Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement. Watch more of the controversy surrounding Bush’s speech
Democrats, including Obama’s rival for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, condemned the president.
After almost eight years, I did not think I could be surprised about anything that George Bush says, but I was wrong, Obama said.
The president did something that presidents don’t do. That is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation, he said. Watch more of Obama’s comments
Later Friday, at a press conference, Obama criticized Bush’s speech again, saying, The speech yesterday wasn’t about an actual policy argument, it was about politics … about trying to scare the American people. And that’s what will not work in this election.
Who is this ’some’ that they were talking about? … Was this just a straw man that they were setting up? And if so … what was the purpose of the remarks? I’m less concerned about whether the remarks were being directed against me personally, because frankly there is no evidence out there that I’ve ever suggested that we should engage terrorists. So obviously, it didn’t apply to me.
McCain did not echo Bush’s remarks Thursday, but told reporters, It is a serious error on the part of Sen. Obama, that shows naivety and inexperience and lack of judgment, to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country who says that Israel is a stinking corpse.
Obama has said he would meet with Iran’s firebrand president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who last week referred to Israel as a stinking corpse — in his first year of office without preconditions. Clinton said she supports diplomacy, but would not hold presidential-level meetings unless Iran took certain steps first.
But Obama said Friday, I have been adamant about not negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel and won’t recognize them.
Obama said McCain wants to double down on Bush’s failed policies, and that the senator still hasn’t spelled out one substantial way in which he would be different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy.
If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I’m happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for, he said.
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