McCain To Hit Obama On Foreign Policy

From CBS News' John Bentley

(ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.) John McCain will go after Barack Obama this morning at a town hall here on his plans to talk about his policy for Iraq and Afghanistan before his scheduled visit to the region.

“He is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time,” McCain will say, according to excerpts released by the campaign.

“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."

Obama will argue in his speech that the war in Iraq is causing too few American troops to be sent to Afghanistan.

“As should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain, the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was,” Obama will say in his speech in Washington this morning.

“Sen. McCain said – just months ago – that ‘Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq.’ I could not disagree more.”

McCain acknowledged yesterday that “a lot of things” need to be done in Afghanistan, and that could entail more U.S. troops being sent there. But he disagreed with Obama’s assertion that the main front in the war on terror was in Afghanistan.

“He was wrong when he said we've lost the war, and he is wrong today when he says that Iraq is not the central battleground,” McCain said about Obama. “That's what Gen. Petraeus says and that's what Osama bin Laden says, that Iraq is the central battleground. We are winning there and his proposals would jeopardize the fragility of the success we've achieved. And his refusal to acknowledge that success is remarkable.”