By Lochrane Smith
|
April 10, 2008
John McCain and Barack Obama disagree on where America should be fighting the war on terror, but still have similar messages, two former White House advisers said in a panel Thursday.
Stephen Yates, who served as the deputy national security adviser under Vice President Dick Cheney, and Derek Mitchell, a Defense Department official during the Clinton administration, discussed how presidential hopefuls McCain and Obama would approach foreign policy if elected in front of about 35 students and community members in Jepson Hall April 3.
Terrorism remains the primary concern for all candidates, with McCain believing Iraq is the central focus of the war on terror, Mitchell said.
"Obama says to get out of Iraq as carefully as we went in carelessly, and then focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan," Mitchell said.
As far as considering Iraq as the current center of the war on terror, candidates are debating and evaluating what has been done so far and what to do now that war has been waged, Yates said.
"Is there a war on terrorism?" he asked.
