Pakistan came up again as Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama sparred with each other in their last debate on Monday night, six days before the crucial Texas and Ohio primaries. If Clinton loses those two states, she is out of the race for her partyÂ’s presidential nomination.
Clinton said, “Senator Obama ... last summer, he basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don’t think was a particularly wise position to take. I have long advocated a much tougher approach to Musharraf and to Pakistan and have pushed the White House to do that. And I disagree with his [Obama’s] continuing to say that he would meet with some of the worst dictators in the world without preconditions and without the real, you know, understanding of what we would get from them.”
Obama was quick to react with, “With respect to Pakistan, I never said I would bomb Pakistan. What I said was that if we have actionable intelligence against [Osama] Bin Laden or other key Al Qaeda officials and we – and Pakistan is unwilling or unable to strike against them, we should. And just several days ago, in fact, this administration did exactly that and took out the third-ranking Al Qaeda official. That is the position we should have taken in the first place.” |