McCain-Palin Campaign Conference Call On Stories About Terrorism And The 2008 Election

"Now let me be clear. If we are going to talk about who had got support from terrorist groups in this election I am going to read some quotes, I am not going to characterize them, I will let others judge whether the amount of expression of support or opposition whether they amount to expressions of endorsement or opposition. First this week a Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef said quote, 'I do believe Mr. Biden is a great man and we do count on him as also a good partner with Mr. Obama to put the right policy regarding how to handle problems in the region. It is good for America to have the new administration with someone like Mr. Obama and his vision for change. I do believe actually with this administration, the Bush administration, we don't have luck in ending our isolation. We as Palestinians are thinking we might have better luck with the new administration if Obama wins the election. I do believe that he will change American foreign policy in the way they are handling the Middle East.'" -- Randy Scheunemann

Today, McCain-Palin 2008 held a press conference call with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and McCain-Palin Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss recent news stories about which candidate terrorists would like to see in the White House in 2009:

Randy Scheunemann: "The Washington Post story that Mike referred to was an amazing piece of 'journalism' and I use journalism in quotations marks when referring to this story. One post of a relatively obscure individual justifies the headline that Al-Qaeda Websites Supports John McCain'. Only one website was named and only one author was quoted. Even The Associated Press which wrote a follow on story recognized that the author of the posting that The Washington Post cited, Muhammad Haafid, quote 'is not believed to have a direct affiliation with al-Qaeda plans or knowledge of its operations' closed quote and that's according to the same SITE, s-i-t-e, analysts quoted by The Washington Post. Did The Washington Post not even bother to ask him the question about this author and whether he was linked to al-Qaeda or did they not care?

"The article goes on to say that terrorism experts say that bluster by a group that may have more to fear from a McCain presidency, yet they couldn't find any space to quote these experts in a story that didn't seem to be overly constrained by space limitations.

"Now even if you take this posting that The Washington Post reported on at face value let me make a couple of points. First, The Post assumes if you read the whole thing, which I have, that Obama wouldn't even be in the fight. Only Senator Obama has advocated withdrawal and surrender to al-Qaeda in Iraq when al-Qaeda was at the peak of its power. The Washington Post didn't provide any of that context that Senator Obama advocated a withdrawal and voted against funding for our troops while we were engaged in fighting with al-Qaeda in early 2007, when al-Qaeda was at the peak of its power. Even Senator Biden has expressed doubts about Senator Obama and how he is going to react when the going gets tough. In fact when Senator Biden talked about a generated crisis and a response to which an Obama-Biden presidency would not be seen as right, it didn't even rate a full story in The Washington Post, a 230 word blurb is all that they gave that.

"Next point is that only Senator Obama has said that we can't afford to spend the money to win in Iraq. So while the jihadists are posting gleefully about the financial crisis, the Post barely found time to mention that it is only Senator Obama that said for financial reasons that we need to withdraw from Iraq. John McCain will spend what it takes to win in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

"If you read the full posting to, it has an interesting item where the author says quote 'this explains it's, meaning the U.S., submission to the Taliban in Afghanistan in seeking to negotiate without preconditions.' To my knowledge, the U.S. doesn't have that course of action but clearly the author of that posting sees negotiation without precondition as weakness and as submission and in fact there's only one candidate in this race that has advocated negotiating with our enemies and state sponsors of terrorism without preconditions, and that's Senator Obama.

"Now The Washington Post can explain why it used the quotes it did. Minimal perusing of the same website they quoted finds many, many other quotations including one which says quote, 'regardless of who wins the election, the old man or the climber, I inform you it will be dealt with according to your policies towards the land of Islam and Muslims.' So they had many alternative postings that they could have chosen to write about but they obviously chose one, for whatever reasons, wherever they found it, why ever they did it, to create an inflammatory headline that is not even supported by its own story and certainly not supported by a full reading of the Post.

"Now let me be clear. If we are going to talk about who had got support from terrorist groups in this election I am going to read some quotes, I am not going to characterize them, I will let others judge whether the amount of expression of support or opposition whether they amount to expressions of endorsement or opposition. First this week a Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef said quote, 'I do believe Mr. Biden is a great man and we do count on him as also a good partner with Mr. Obama to put the right policy regarding how to handle problems in the region. It is good for America to have the new administration with someone like Mr. Obama and his vision for change. I do believe actually with this administration, the Bush administration, we don't have luck in ending our isolation. We as Palestinians are thinking we might have better luck with the new administration if Obama wins the election. I do believe that he will change American foreign policy in the way they are handling the Middle East.' Now this has been publicly available for several days. Again this is terrorist group Hamas and their spokesperson Ahmed Yousef. The Washington Post did not find time to write a story about that. Not a single story, not a single mention about a very clear statement from Hamas.

"Second, last month when Iranian President Ahmadinejad was in the United States, he was asked by a student whether he supports Democratic nominee Barack Obama or Republican John McCain. This is what president Ahmadinejad, who has called for the extinction of Israel has said, quote, 'the American government 28 years ago decided to cut its own ties with Iran. We do prefer to have relations whereas one of the candidates in this election would prefer that.' I think everybody on this call understands which candidate for president has endorsed unconditional meetings with president Ahmadinejad.

"Three, from Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, he said talking about Obama 'all the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaign to enable him to win the American presidency.' I'm not sure if The Washington Post ever reported on that. So we have three clear examples here of very strong statements, none to my knowledge have ever been covered by The Washington Post, all are on the record, all are clear, they are not on an obscure website by an obscure individual where words have to be twisted to create headlines that The Washington Post chooses to put on its stories."

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Jim Woolsey: "I would just make two additional points. Beginning about three months after our move into Iraq in 2003, John McCain began saying on national television that we did not have enough forces and we needed to change strategy. He stayed on that tact for three and a half years until finally President Bush listened to him in December of 2006 and began the surge and the change of strategy. Now one important aspect of the change in strategy was to link up with the Sunnis and the Awakening Movement in the Anbar Province and to cooperate in going after al-Qaeda in Iraq. In posting after posting, it was clear from al-Qaeda itself and from Bin Laden's statements and Zawahiri's statements that this link up which John McCain was essentially the father of, this change in strategy, was what was causing al-Qaeda in Iraq, which al-Qaeda put at right in front of their struggle, the biggest difficulty and the biggest problem. It was killing al- Qaeda in Iraq, leaders that drew the biggest concern from al-Qaeda and from really all of the Islamists. John McCain was responsible as much as anyone in the country for that turn around. It is ridiculous to believe that in its heart of hearts al-Qaeda wants John McCain to be the President. And it is ludicrous.

"The second point is that if one takes one individual Islamist blogger from one terrorist Islamist blog, who has come up with this statement that it would be good to have McCain in the White House, I think one has to consider the motives. This individual knows that the endorsement of people like him is a kiss of death, figuratively and literally, so it seems to me it's pretty clear that by making this statement that he wants, that it would be a good thing for McCain to be President, he is clearly trying to damage John McCain, not speaking from his heart. So I must say I think the overall structure of the debate as one analyzes it coming out of this story taken at face value is quite remarkable."

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