Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he
would send U.S. troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists
even without local permission if warranted--an
attempt to show strength when his chief rival has
described his foreign policy skills as naive.
The Illinois
senator warned Pakistan's 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.''
The excerpts were
provided by the Obama campaign in advance of the
speech.
Obama's speech
comes the week after his rivalry with New York senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton erupted into a public fight over
their diplomatic intentions.
Obama said he
would be willing to meet leaders of rogue states like Cuba,
North Korea, and Iran without conditions, an idea that
Clinton criticized as irresponsible and naive. Obama
responded by using the same words to describe
Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war and called her
''Bush-Cheney lite.''
Thousands of
Taliban fighters are based in Pakistan's vast and jagged
mountains, where they can pass into Afghanistan, train for
suicide operations, and find refuge from local
tribesmen. Intelligence experts warn that al-Qaida
could be rebuilding here to mount another attack on
the United States.
Musharraf has
been a key ally of Washington in fighting terrorism since
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but has faced
accusations from some quarters in Pakistan of being
too closely tied to America.
The Bush
administration has supported Musharraf and stressed the need
to cooperate with Pakistan, but lately administration
officials have suggested the possibility of military
strikes to deal with al-Qaida and its leader, Osama
bin Laden.
Analysts say an
invasion could risk destabilizing Pakistan, breeding more
militancy and undermining Musharraf. The Pakistani Foreign
Office, protective of its national sovereignty, has
warned that U.S. military action would violate
international law and be deeply resented.
A military
invasion could be risky, given Pakistan's hostile terrain
and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen
against uninvited outsiders.
Congress passed
legislation Friday that would tie aid from the United
States to Islamabad's efforts to stop al-Qaida and the
Taliban from operating in its territory. President
Bush has yet to sign it.
Obama's speech
was a condemnation of President George W. Bush's
leadership in the war on terror. He said the focus on Iraq
has left Americans in more danger than before
September 11, and that Bush has misrepresented the
enemy as Iraqis who are fighting a civil war instead
of the terrorists responsible for the attacks six years ago.
''He confuses our
mission,'' Obama said, then he spread responsibility to
lawmakers like Clinton who voted for the invasion. ''By
refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is
giving the terrorists what they really want, and what
the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation
of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with
undetermined consequences.'' (Nedra Pickler, AP)