McCain clarifies remark about oil, Iraq war
PHOENIX (AP) - Republican John McCain was forced to clarify his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He said he was talking about the first Gulf War and not the current conflict.
At issue was a comment he made at a town hall-style meeting Friday morning in Denver.
"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said.
The expected GOP nominee sought to clarify his comments later, after his campaign plane landed in Phoenix. It was the second time in as many days that McCain had to clarify his comments. On Thursday, he backed off an assertion that pork-barrel spending led to last year's deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
McCain said Friday he didn't mean the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil.
"No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons," McCain told reporters.
One reason was Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he said. "But also we didn't want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it's more important than any other part of the world," he said.
"If the word `again' was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean," McCain said.
"The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Those weapons, the Bush administration's justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, were never found.
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Clinton seeks gas tax vote, Obama calls it 'Shell' game
MUNSTER, Ind. (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a vote Friday in the Democratic-controlled Congress on a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, a plan that Barack Obama dismissed as a political stunt that would cost thousands of construction jobs.
"It's a Shell game. Literally," Obama said to laughter from his campaign audience, adding it would mean little for hard-pressed consumers.
The Democratic presidential rivals highlighted their differences in ads and speeches across North Carolina and Indiana, two states with primaries Tuesday.
Polls point toward a particularly close finish in Indiana, which is next door to Obama's home state of Illinois.
Surveys show him with a dwindling advantage in North Carolina, and Clinton decided to spend all of Friday and Saturday in the state before returning to Indiana for a final push. Both candidates addressed the North Carolina Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson dinner Friday night.
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