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Pakistan, Afghanistan comments dog Obama

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By Bret Hayworth | Tuesday, August 7, 2007 12:23 AM CDT | () comments

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Comments he made about sending U.S. troops into Pakistan stayed with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama into a second week.

As Obama visited Sioux City on Monday for the second time in 2007, the second audience question came from a man who wanted the U.S. senator from Illinois to make plain what he meant last week when he said troops withdrawn from Iraq should be sent into Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Obama said there was “misreporting” of his comments, adding, “I never called for an invasion of Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

Rather than a surge in the number of troops in Iraq, he said, there needs to be a “diplomatic surge” and that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq within a year.

Further, Obama said, if there were “actionable intelligence reports” showing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan, the U.S. troops should, as a last resort, enter the country and try to capture the terrorist leader and his followers. That would happen, he added, only if “the Pakistani government was unable or unwilling” to go after the terrorists.

Battling a few disruptions from the crowd, Obama kept his composure while spending three-fourths of the one-hour event at an elementary school answering questions.

The majority of his prepared remarks centered on his quest for change in Washington, D.C., to overthrow the influence of lobbyists who have “disproportionate influence” and stand in the way of the real change that Obama contends Americans want in health care, energy and support for rural communities.

He lashed out at the influence oil companies had in writing the most recent energy bill and that pharmaceutical companies had in crafting the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit.

To considerable applause, he said, “The country is hungry for change, people are desperate for a new direction.”

He told the crowd of 400 it would not be enough to elect him president, “that, in this election, unless we take the process of politics back from the lobbyists and the special interests, then nothing much is going to change, even if we change political parties. That is the reason why I don’t take PAC (political action committee) money.” Obama added that “the enemy, though, of this whole process is if you are too cynical that you think things can’t change.”

The Rev. Mike Larkin of Sioux City is a Catholic priest who has been an independent and became a Republican near the end of the Bill Clinton administration.

While Larkin said he does not, as a priest, condone the typical Democratic Party stance of supporting a woman’s right to choose an abortion, he has settled on Obama as his candidate.

Larkin said the senator has the youthful energy for change that John F. Kennedy possessed.

Larkin termed Obama “very positive in his outlook, and he brings a lot of hope. I’m hoping that I’m not going to be disappointed if he gets nominated by his party and elected.”

(The Sioux City Journal is a Lee Enterprises Newspaper.)

Bret Hayworth may be contacted at (712) 293-4203 or brethayworth@siouxcityjournal.com.