White House hopeful Barack Obama laid the groundwork for a vital trip abroad yesterday, vowing to shift the "single-minded" US focus from Iraq to Al Qaeda lairs in Pakistan and Afghanistan.As a furious debate on war strategy raged between the Democrat and his Republican foe John McCain, Obama planned a major speech in Washington and in-depth television interviews to bolster his commander-in-chief credentials.
Obama is expected in Europe and the Middle East next week, and is also due to embark soon on heavily guarded missions to Afghanistan and Iraq, details of which have not been released for security reasons.
Obama, a long-time opponent of the Iraq war, slammed President George W Bush, and McCain, who he said had misunderstood the prime challenge to US security. "As should have been apparent to President Bush and Senator McCain - the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia," Obama said.
He has proposed adding two US combat brigades, about 9,000 troops, to the 36,000 troops already in Afghanistan and said this would be made possible by a drawdown of troops from Iraq.
McCain immediately and scathingly accused Obama of adopting a closed mind on the twin US wars, before even leaving the US. "In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy."