User:Prester John/Sandbox5

Pakistan
On August 1 2007 Obama declared in his foreign policy speech that the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, with or without the consent of the Pakistani government. He claimed that if elected, "If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will". On the same day in response, then-White House press secretary Tony Snow highlighted the policy's shift from the position established by the Bush Administration, he said: "Our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government, but is also designed to work in a way where we are working in cooperation with the local government,"

ABC News described the policy speech as "counterintuitive", and commented on how "one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush"

After weeks of discourse surrounding the policy, Obama said there was "misreporting" of his comments, claiming that, "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan or Afghanistan." He clarified that rather than a surge in the number of troops in Iraq, there needs to be a "diplomatic surge" and that if there were "actionable intelligence reports" showing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the U.S. troops as a last resort should enter and try to capture terrorists. That would happen, he added, only if "the Pakistani government was unable or unwilling" to go after the terrorists.

Gipper
In mid January 2008 comments made by Obama that appeared to praise the legacy of former Republican president Ronald Regan attracted rebuke from rivals and dissection from all sections of the media. After Obama stated that; "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not." Hillary Clinton ridiculed the idea that the Republicans were the party of ideas, suggesting Mr. Obama had said that the Republicans had “better” ideas, which he did not. Senator John Edwards criticized Obama specifically for referring to Ronald Reagan as an agent of change stating in a newspaper interview that; “I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change,”

Obama prefers Ronal Regan over Bill Clinton

9/11
Obama criticized Bush's emphasis on al Qaeda in Iraq and said as President he would refocus efforts on the al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan by sending at least two additional brigaeds to Afghanistan. He said that "because of a war in Iraq that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged, we are now less safe than we were before 9/11".