US Election 2008 Blog

Fox News

Barack Obama, shown here speaking at a volunteer event in Philadelphia Wednesday, seems to be at odds with an adviser who reportedly recommends keeping up to 80,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2010. (AP Photo)

As Barack Obama continues to criticize John McCain for saying he’s willing to keep a 100-year troop presence in Iraq, another Obama adviser has suggested U.S. forces could stay in Iraq longer than the Democratic candidate initially thought.

Adviser Colin Kahl wrote in a policy paper for the Center for a New American Security that the United States should transition to an “over-watch” force of between 60,000 and 80,000 troops by the end of 2010, according to an article Friday in the New York Sun.

That appears to be at odds with Obama’s public position of removing all combat brigades from the country within 16 months of taking office.

Kahl told the Sun his plan would still keep the U.S. “out of the lead” and mainly in a “support role.” He said the plan had nothing to do with the campaign.

The Obama campaign said in a statement: “The writing of Mr. Kahl, one of hundreds of outside advisers to the campaign, is not representative of Barack Obama’s consistent policy position on the Iraq war.”

But Kahl’s plan seems to jibe with other advisers’ statements that Obama’s withdrawal timetables are more a goal than a firm policy commitment.

Foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, for instance, told reporters in February that Obama’s plan to end the war in 2009 is not absolute, and that he reserves the right to revisit troop levels in Iraq upon taking the oath of office.

Former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power told the BBC that Obama’s 16-month plan is a “best-scenario” and that the reality is he will try to withdraw troops “as quickly and responsibly as possible.”

CNN.com

While Sen. John McCain’s campaign is remarkably happy with the way his “Service to America” biography tour has gone this week, some Republicans say they are not so sure he’s using his time wisely.

Sen. John McCain speaks Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.

On Thursday, McCain stopped at a hangar in Jacksonville, Florida — the place he arrived when released after 5½ years in a Vietnamese prison.

Thirty-five years later, the GOP candidate came back to promote his campaign by talking about lessons he learned.

“I once thought I was man enough for almost any confrontation. In prison, I discovered I was not. I tried to use every personal resource I had to confound my captors, and it wasn’t enough in the end,” he said. Watch more of McCain’s speech »

Joining him were family members rarely on the trail — three children who, along with McCain’s ex-wife, waited there while he was a POW.

“My daughter, Sidney, was an infant when I first left for Vietnam,” McCain said.

Washington Post Staff Writers 

In the past eight years, Bill and Hillary Clinton earned a combined $109 million, with the former president collecting nearly half of that money as a speaker hired at times by companies that have been among his wife’s most generous political supporters.

After leaving the White House, the Clintons earned $30 million from their best-selling books and brought in as much as $15 million more through an investment partnership with one of her top presidential campaign fundraisers, California billionaire Ronald Burkle. The disclosures came with yesterday’s long-awaited release of the Clintons’ joint tax returns, a move made in the thick of Sen. Clinton’s fight with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic nomination.

Sen. Clinton (N.Y.) initially resisted making her family’s finances public, but pressure on her to match Obama’s disclosure grew in February when she disclosed that she had dipped into her personal account to lend her campaign $5 million.

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Barack Obama was recently accused by FOX News and other right wing organizations of being raised a muslim and attended a madrassa

But Candidates Have Taken Positions Exceeding Mainstream of a Few Years Ago

Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post

After Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared in March that homosexuality was immoral, gay supporters of Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York were furious when neither presidential candidate was very critical of Pace.

They let both campaigns know it, and the next day Clinton and Obama said they do not consider homosexuality immoral.

The tentative reactions suggest the caution with which the two leading Democratic contenders approach gay rights issues when they are publicly debated. “The antenna goes up,” acknowledges Ethan Geto, an informal adviser to Clinton on gay rights issues. “It’s a measure of how volatile gay rights issues are in national politics.”

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Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is labelled by former flames as a charmer who could bring home the female vote

Sarah Baxter, Times Online

IN the battle for the women’s vote, Fred Thompson has a secret weapon against Hillary Clinton - the legions of former girlfriends who still adore him and who want him to be president.

The Hollywood actor and former Tennessee senator racked up an impressive list of conquests during his swinging bachelor days in the 1990s, but he appears to have achieved the impossible and kept their friendship and respect.

Lorrie Morgan, a country singer who dated Thompson and considered marrying him in the mid1990s, told The Sunday Times: “I couldn’t think of a bad word to say about Fred if somebody put a gun to my head.

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YouTube

Albanian police say the reports of President Bush’s watch being stolen while greeting the crowd in Tirana are untrue.However, video from the presidential visit shows that while he began to work the crowd with a timepiece on his left arm, within seconds it was gone.

“The story is untrue and the president did not lose his watch,” a spokesman for the embassy in Tirana said.

Some newspapers, television stations and websites carried reports that Bush’s watch vanished on Sunday when he was greeted by ecstatic crowds in Fushe Kruje, outside the capital Tirana.

“It is not true,” said Albania’s police director, Ahmet Prenci.

Photographs showed Bush, surrounded by five bodyguards, putting his hands behind his back so one of the bodyguards could remove his watch. (more)

Associated Press

WILMINGTON, Del. - Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, in an indirect swipe at President Bush, said Thursday the overwhelming attitude that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction reflects a lack of leadership.

The nation’s bleak mood was evident in the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll in which only 21 percent said they believe things in the U.S. are heading in the right direction, the worst mark since the AP-Ipsos poll began in December 2003.

Speaking at a Flag Day rally in Wilmington, Del., Giuliani told more than 200 supporters: “What we’re lacking is strong, aggressive, bold leadership like we had with Ronald Reagan.”

The same AP-Ipsos poll found public approval with the job Bush is doing at 32 percent, matching an all-time low.

The former New York mayor said he’s running for president to keep the United States on offensive against terrorist and to challenge big government.

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By Dante Chinni, Christian Science Monitor

Washington - A debate, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a contention by words or arguments … as a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides.”

If you have watched any of the “debates” among the 2008 Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls, you might be wondering if US news media read the dictionary much. The events featuring eight potential Democratic and 10 possible Republican nominees, each lined up on their respective stages, look and feel less like debates than talent shows. Each candidate wants to stand out and be noticed, without saying or doing something that might embarrass himself or herself.

As painful as they can be to watch, these early debates are nothing new. The Democrats’ first primary debate for the 2004 presidential race was held on May 3, 2003 – there were nine candidates in that one. You probably don’t remember it because it wasn’t televised until hours after it ended and not televised at all in some parts of country.

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By David M. Halbfinger - New York Times Blog

LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg’s exploratory phase is over: He’s a Hillary Clinton man.

After a flirtation with Senator Barack Obama in February, and maxing out his contributions to both Mr. Obama and former Senator John Edwards, the famous filmmaker today threw his support formally behind Senator Clinton.

It’s the most significant indication yet that Hollywood luminaries are returning to what was expected to be their default position at the start of the campaign, before Mr. Obama suddenly grew white-hot.

In a statement that her campaign splashed across its home page, Mr. Spielberg cited Mrs. Clinton’s “experience and strength.”

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