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Media Travel Packet 1 MEDIA TRAVEL PACKET QUESTIONS FOR OBAMA ................................................................................................................................................................. 2 AFGHANISTAN................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 IRAQ ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3 OBAMA’S EVOLUTION ON IRAQ....................................................................................................................................................... 6 OBAMA’S EVOLUTION ON SUPPORT FOR THE WAR AND TIMETABLES FOR WITHDRAWAL ......................................... 6 OBAMA’S EVOLUTION ON TROOP FUNDING ............................................................................................................................ 8 OBAMA’S EVOLUTION ON THE SURGE ................................................................................................................................... 10 OBAMA’S EVOLUTION ON THE STRIKE FORCE IN IRAQ ...................................................................................................... 11 AFGHANISTAN .................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 OBAMA’S LACK OF LEADERSHIP .............................................................................................................................................. 11 OBAMA’S HYPOCRISY ON TROOP FUNDING ......................................................................................................................... 12 OBAMA’S LACK OF KNOWLEDGE ON AFGHANISTAN ........................................................................................................... 13 ISRAEL ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 OBAMA’S WEAK POLICY ON IRAN ............................................................................................................................................ 14 OBAMA’S BLUNDERS WITH THE JEWISH COMMUNITY ........................................................................................................ 15 QUESTIONS FOR OBAMA AFGHANISTAN You said on “Meet the Press,” on May 4, 2008, “I think we have to be focused on Afghanistan.” So why is it that, according to The Hill newspaper, you have “missed two of three Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Afghanistan since joining the panel” ? And why have you only now decided to visit Afghanistan for the first time after having been in office for more than three and a half years? Yet you’ve already visited Iraq once. Why aren’t you focused on Afghanistan in your work as a senator? You’ve also talked about how critical it is to get our European allies to increase their contributions in Afghanistan. “As we step up our commitment,” you said on August 1, 2007, “our European friends must do the same, and without the burdensome restrictions that have hampered NATO's efforts.” Yet as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs since January 2007 you haven’t held a single hearing on this or any other subject. Why not? Are you putting your political ambitions above doing the job that the people of Illinois elected you to do? You predicted that the surge in Iraq would fail. In January 2007 you said, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” You still deny that the surge has been a success, even if violence is down. “Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the purpose of the surge,” you claim. Yet you are now proposing a smaller surge in Afghanistan of two brigades, or about 8,000 troops. Why do you think a smaller surge will work in Afghanistan when you were convinced that a bigger surge would fail in Iraq? You opposed the surge and called for withdrawing all of our combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008. You said that we should be “getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Why do you think that losing to Al Qaeda in Iraq would have helped us to defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan? On May 13, you said that we should redeploy translators from Iraq to Afghanistan. "We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan," you said. Are you aware of the fact that Iraqis speak Arabic while Afghans speak Dari, Pashto, and other languages? At a presidential debate on February 21, 2008, you complained that our troops in Afghanistan “didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough Humvees.” So why did you vote against giving them the funding they need to fight? On May 24, 2007, you were one of only 14 senators who voted against a $94.4 billion spending bill that included crucial funding for our troops not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan. 2 In that same debate, you claimed that our troops in Afghanistan “were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.” Have you found any evidence to back up that claim? Has there been a single published report of shortages of ammunition in Afghanistan? And, if there have been such shortages, doesn’t that make your vote against funding the troops even more irresponsible? You now complain that “We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.” Did you make a single public statement in the fall of 2001 calling for more U.S. troops to be sent to Afghanistan to finish off Al Qaeda? Or is this just after-the-fact second guessing for political advantage? You’ve said we need to “use the power of American diplomacy” and that “It's time to turn the page on the diplomacy of tough talk and no action.” Yet in the very same speech, you also said: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.” Pakistan’s foreign minister branded your statement as “very irresponsible.” Why do you think it’s a good idea to bluster in public about taking military action on the soil of an American ally? And how do you think that such statements will help you to achieve your goal of initiating “a new relationship” with Pakistan “so that we can get better cooperation to hunt down al-Qaeda”? You have warned against “the invasion of a country posing no imminent threat” and said that we should not fight “in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,” because to do so “would fan the flames of extremism. You were speaking of Iraq. Yet what imminent threat does Afghanistan currently pose against the United States that would justify the heightened commitment you propose? There is no evidence that any of the perpetrators of 9/11 are still in Afghanistan. Won’t sending more troops to Afghanistan simply “fan the flames of extremism”? You applauded the Supreme Court’s recent ruling giving habeas corpus rights to captured terrorists. Your supporters, Senator John Kerry and former NSC staffer Richard Clarke, say this means that if Osama bin Laden is captured he will have habeas corpus rights too. Do you agree with them? And if so do you think this is a good idea? You said, in explaining your opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2002, “What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” Given your attacks on “armchair, weekend warriors,” what credibility do you have, never having served in uniform yourself, to order more American men and women into harms’ way in Afghanistan? IRAQ Twenty-nine Senate Democrats—including your strong supporters Joe Biden, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, and John Kerry — voted in 2002 to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. Other prominent Democrats also spoke out in favor of the war. You have said that this was “the most important foreign-policy decision in a generation,” and you have denounced politicians “who feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions.” Since, by your lights, these senators failed this generational test and failed to ask the hard questions, why are you seeking their advice today? Will you pledge not to appoint any of them to a position in your administration? You have pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months. But you have also said, “We will need to retain some forces in Iraq and the region.” However you have never said how many troops you would leave behind—not even a range. Your former adviser Samantha Power said that "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.” When Fareed Zakaria asked you whether you “you could imagine a situation where, if the Iraqi government wanted it, 30,000 American troops are still in Iraq 10 years from now,” you replied, “You know, I have been very careful not to put numbers on what a residual force
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