Campaigns renew battle over Iraq

The presidential campaigns exchanged harsh words over Iraq Monday following Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) call for a 16-month phased redeployment out of Iraq to free up troops to fight resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), blasted Obama’s plan during a morning conference call with reporters, saying the likely Democratic nominee “seems to think losing a war will help him win an election.”

{mosads}Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) echoed Scheunemann’s charge, saying Democrats have “built a political strategy around us losing the war in Iraq,”

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) defended Obama’s plan on a subsequent conference call, saying the plan was “profoundly right” and “more in line with what our military needs are and what our military thinks.”

Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a possible vice presidential candidate, also took the opportunity to attack McCain, saying the Arizona senator has a “total lack of understanding” and “no notion of what is going on” in Iraq.

McCain has repeatedly rejected a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq, calling promises like that made by Obama Monday “the height of irresponsibility” on his website.

“I don’t understand anything about John’s policy here,” Biden said. “I don't know what he is talking about except more of the same.”

Biden said McCain’s stance on Iraq would “prevent” the U.S. military from effectively fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan if he is elected president. McCain’s plan for Iraq shows no “larger strategy” to fight terrorism beyond Iraq’s border, Biden said.

The Biden call was designed to discuss Obama’s Monday morning op-ed in The New York Times, which outlined his plan for a U.S. exit from Iraq. In the op-ed, Obama highlighted the need to fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the failure of the surge to engender political reconciliation as the primary reasons for withdrawal.