Obama vows to 'kill' Osama; outshines McCain again

WASHINGTON: In a sharp attack on Pakistan's inability to curb terrorism, Democratic White House nominee Barack Obama on Wednesday clashed with his Republican rival John McCain over the issue and stumped him on Bush administration's "failed" policies on Iraq and economy, edging past the Vietnam war veteran in yet another free-flowing debate.
    
"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda, that has to be our biggest national security priority," 47-year-old Obama said during the testy 90-minute debate, clearly showing his determination to act on his promise of hot pursuit of militants in Pakistan, a stand often criticised by McCain and that has raised hackles in Islamabad.
    
"If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out," the Illinois Senator said during the second in a series of three debates between the Presidential hopefuls.
    
Obama  tried to tie his Republican rival to President George W Bush's "failed" policies, while McCain pushed his image as a "consistent reformer" at the townhouse style standoff at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.
    
Responding to a question whether the US should respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue terrorists who maintain bases there, Obama said: "It's a terrific question and we have a difficult situation in Pakistan."
    
Obama, who had outshined 71-year-old McCain in the September 26 debate as well, said he believed the US had to change its policies on Pakistan.
    
"I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't cuddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants," Obama said, referring to former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

"So I agree that we have to speak responsibly and we have to act responsibly," Obama said, adding that the reason why the popular opinion of America had diminished in Pakistan was because "we were supporting a dictator, Musharraf, (and) had given him USD 10 billion over seven years, and he had suspended civil liberties.
    
"We were not promoting democracy. This is the kind of policies that ultimately end up undermining our ability to fight the war on terrorism, and it will change when I'm president," Obama, who hopes to be the first black-American occupant of the White House, said.
    
As in the first debate, Obama and McCain appeared divided on how to tackle al-Qaeda and the Taliban operating in the restive tribal areas along the Pak-Afghan border.
    
Obama said he believed that part of the reason why the US had a difficult situation is because "we made a bad judgement going into Iraq in the first place when we hadn't finished the job of hunting down bin Laden and crushing al-Qaeda."
    
"So what happened was we got distracted, we diverted resources, and ultimately bin Laden escaped, set up base camps in the mountains of Pakistan...," Obama said.     

However, McCain charged that Obama "does not understand" the national security challenges facing the country.
    
Trailing behind Obama in the latest opinion polls, McCain accused him of announcing a war on Pakistan and cited former US president Theodore Roosevelt's statement that the Commander-in-chief should "talk softly, but carry a big stick."
    
The Vietnam war veteran said he knows how to handle foreign affairs and questioned the first-time Senator Obama's ability to do so. "Senator Obama was wrong about Iraq and the surge. He was wrong about Russia when they committed aggression against Georgia. And in his short career, he does not understand our national security challenges."
    
"We don't have time for on-the-job training, my friends," McCain said.

McCain said the "challenge" facing a president considering using military force "is to know when to go in and when not," adding that "my judgement is something that I think I have a record to stand on."
    
Obama then shot back and questioned McCain's judgement in supporting the invasion of Iraq. When McCain was cheerleading Bush to go into Iraq, "he suggested it was going to be quick and easy, we'd be greeted as liberators," he said. "That was the wrong judgement, and it's been costly to us."
    
Opinion polls suggested that Obama won the second debate. Fifty four per cent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey said that Obama did the best job, while 30 per cent said McCain performed better. The poll was conducted by phone with 675 adults who watched the debate.     

A CBS poll of undecided voters suggested 39 per cent thought Obama as the winner, 27 per cent backed McCain while 35 per cent called it a draw.
    
The two presidential candidates spent most of the time debating foreign affairs and economic issues. At the start of the debate, Obama said the country is in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929.
    
Obama said the current crisis was the "final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years" that President George W Bush pursued and were "supported by Senator McCain" as the two worked to "strip away regulation."
    
Bush and McCain, he claimed, favoured deregulation of the financial industry, predicting that would "let markets run wild and prosperity would rain down on all of us. It didn't happen."
    
McCain said the system in Washington "cries out for bipartisanship" and proposed having the government buy up and renegotiate bad home loans to stabilise the property market.     

McCain and Obama will face off for a third and final time on October 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.