Obama To Invade Pakistan

by phrolen | August 1, 2007 at 07:53 pm

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By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 1, 8:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

"Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

This comes as a bit of a stunner to the policy establishment who has seen Obama as one of the premier placatory advocates to the anti-war base of the democratic party. Time may tell if a President Obama would truly enforce his harsh campaign rhetoric, however, it is worth noting that Senator Obama has come under intense criticism as of late for comments he made that seemed to paint himself as diplomatically soft on state sponsors of terrorism and other rogue regimes.

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