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July 5, 2008
Posted: 04:21 PM ET
From CNN's Chris Welch, CNN's Ed Hornick, CNN's Steve Brusk
Sen. Barack Obama speaks on his Iraq policy aboard his campaign plane headed to Missouri on Saturday.
ST. LOUIS, Missouri (CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama, speaking on board his campaign plane as it headed to St. Louis on Saturday, continued to defend his position on Iraq — and questioned reporters' parsing of his words. "I am surprised at how … the press … I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured," Obama said. "I wasn't saying anything that I hadn't said before. That I didn't say a year ago. Or when I was a U.S. senator. If you look at our position, it's been very consistent. The notion that we have to get out carefully has been a consistent position," he said. "The belief that we have a national security interest in making sure Iraq is secure, I've been saying consistently," he added. Noting "the worst-case scenarios and the parade of horribles that has been trotted out by John McCain and others about genocide if we left," he said he has always reserved "the right to protect people from genocide." "So a lot of these statements that I've made have been entirely consistent," Obama added. Late Saturday afternoon, McCain's campaign responded to Obama's comments. In a statement, campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said, “We are all absolutely committed to ending this war, but on Thursday Barack Obama’s words indicated that he also shared John McCain’s commitment to securing the peace beforehand. What’s really puzzling is that Barack Obama still doesn’t understand that his words matter." In North Dakota on Thursday, Obama denied that he's shying away from his proposed 16-month phased withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq, calling it "pure speculation" and adding that his "position has not changed." However, he told reporters questioning his stance that he will "continue to refine" his policies as warranted. Presumably unhappy with the media's coverage of his earlier statements on Iraq — and after the Republican National Committee issued attack emails asserting he's "reversed" his position — Obama called a second news conference later Thursday to reiterate that he is not changing his stance. Watch: Obama clarifies his comments on Iraq "We’re gonna try this again. Apparently I wasn't clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq. I have said throughout this campaign that this war was ill-conceived, that it was a strategic blunder and that it needs to come to an end," he said. "I have also said that I would be deliberate and careful in how we got out, that we would bring our troops home at a pace of one to two brigades per month and that at that pace we would have our combat troops out in 16 months." Filed under: Barack Obama Iraq
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