McCAIN AND BIN LADEN….Our story so far: Barack Obama says that if he had actionable intelligence about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts in Pakistan, he’d take him out. John McCain says that’s naive and reckless. Then, a couple of days ago while ordering a cheesesteak, Sarah Palin jumped in and said she’d take him out too. Huh? So on Monday Katie Couric asked the two of them whether Palin had gone off the reservation. Answer: that’s a silly gotcha question. The issue isn’t whether McCain/Palin take out bin Laden, it’s whether they’d say that they’re willing to take out bin Laden. “Never would our administration get out there and show our cards to terrorists,” Palin said, “in this case to enemy, and let them know what the game plan is.”
Got that? They’d do it, but they’d never publicly say they were going to do it. But Judah Grunstein points us to this interview with McCain from a year ago:
Q: So if you were president and you knew that bin Laden were over there, you had a target spotting, you could nail him, you’d go get him?
McCain: Sure. Sure. We have to, and I’m sure that after the initial flurry, that whoever our friends are, wherever he is, would be relieved because, as I mentioned to you before, he’s still very effective in the world, very, very effective.
So long ago, before all of this nonsense hit the campaign trail, McCain himself was saying the exact same thing as Obama: if we knew where bin Laden was, of course we’d take him out — and then pick up the pieces afterward. Needless to say, this will come as no surprise to the government of Pakistan, which has never been under any illusions about this. (And neither have the terrorists, regardless of what Palin burbles about it.) But it’s a useful attack line for McCain, so I guess we’ll keep hearing it.
