Isn't it past time for the McSame loving mainstream media to admit its error and stop claiming that Sid is knowledgeable about foreign policy?

McBush makes so many repeated blunders (doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia, or that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for 15 years) and still mistakenly insists that Iraq is the center of terrorist activity.

Jim Lobe's article in the Asia Times shows the chasm between McSame's stubborn, myopic bungling and Barack Obama' on target, correct statements on foreign policy

"If nothing else, the deaths on Sunday of nine United States soldiers at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border are likely to bring home to the US electorate what top national security officials have been saying for much of the past year - that the central front in Washington's "war on terror" has moved eastwards about 1,800 kilometers from Iraq."

Actually, it never changed.  Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq based on deceit but whose main goal was control of oil resources, weakened the situation in Afghanistan that has led to the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida and the current dangerous situation with an increase in US/NATO troop deaths.

Lobe continues, "While Republican Senator John McCain, like the White House itself, has insisted that victory in Iraq must be priority number one for US foreign policy, his presumptive Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, and his top advisers have repeatedly warned that the situation in Afghanistan and the frontier regions of Pakistan required much more attention and resources than President George W Bush has been willing to give it. 

"Indeed, in a column coincidentally published by the New York Times on Monday, Obama called for a "new strategy" in Afghanistan, including the deployment there of "at least two additional combat brigades ... and more non-military assistance to accomplish the mission there". At a campaign appearance on Sunday, he called Afghanistan and the border areas "the real center for terrorist activity that we have to deal with and deal with aggressively". 

"Both [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael] Mullen and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have made little secret of their impatience to send some 10,000 more US troops - the same number urged by Obama - to add to the 34,000 already deployed there. But, with the White House unwilling to risk the progress it has made in curbing the violence in Iraq and US ground forces already over-stretched, they say Afghanistan will have to wait until more troops are withdrawn from Iraq. 

"Indeed, in a press release issued on Monday, the McCain campaign, citing statements by Petraeus in April and, ironically, by Osama bin Laden in 2004, reiterated that Iraq remains "the central front in the war on terrorism". Neither the release nor a teleconference by his foreign policy spokesmen mentioned Sunday's attack or the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan other than asserting that it was "an important front in the war on terror"

"The nine US soldiers died when about 200 Taliban insurgents, reportedly from Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan, penetrated a recently built outpost in Kunar province in a coordinated assault. Fifteen other US troops and four Afghan army soldiers were also wounded in the raid, which was eventually repelled after air support was called in. As many as 40 of the attackers were killed, according to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led (NATO) International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. 

"The US death toll was the largest since 16 troops were killed when a military helicopter was shot down by the Taliban in Kunar three years ago and, as noted by the Los Angeles Times, "accelerated what had already been a rapidly rising fatality count among coalition troops in Afghanistan".

How blind and stupid can McBush be?  Obama looks like the expert on foreign policy, not J. Sid who keeps bumbling and stumbling around and following Dubya's failed policies.