Palin Hits Obama For Stance On Pakistan She Recently Seemed To Support
(CBS)
(RENO, NEV.) - Shifting gears from the economy to foreign policy, Sarah Palin began her rally here with a series of scathing attacks, centered around Joe Biden’s recent comment at a fundraiser that a President Obama would face an international crisis within his first six months in office.
"Our opponent wants to sit down with the world’s worst dictators,” Palin said. “With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Tehran that vows to 'wipe Israel off the map.'”
The Alaska governor criticized Obama for advocating cross-border attacks into Pakistan without that nation’s approval, disparaging him for suggesting that the U.S. should engage in “invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism.”
But it was less than a month ago that Palin herself advocated invading the sovereignty of Pakistan, though she did not specify that the attacks would be without Pakistan’s approval.
“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Temple University graduate student Michael Rovito asked Palin at a Philadelphia restaurant on Aug. 27.
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.
When it was noted that Palin’s comments to Rovito seemed to echo Obama’s position on Pakistan while contradicting McCain’s, Palin accused the media of engaging in “gotcha journalism.”
But Palin has a different standard of what constitutes “gotcha journalism” when it comes to her opponents’ interactions with voters.
She has repeatedly criticized Joe Biden for an off-the-cuff comment he made to a voter in Ohio about clean coal. And at the rally here, she hammered Obama for impromptu comments that the Democratic nominee made to “Joe the Plumber” about redistributing wealth.
“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo, I don’t think that our opponent was real pleased,” Palin said. “It seems that their staged photo-op got ruined by a real person’s real question. Joe wanted more than a handshake and a campaign button. He wanted some answers. So he asked, he just simply asked a simple and straightforward question and he spoke for so many Americans, and the Obama campaign did not appreciate that.”
