Hearing-Gate Exposed! McCain Has Worse Afghanistan Hearing Record Than Obama
Share July 17, 2008 6:13 PM
ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports from Capitol Hill: The McCain campaign criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's hearing record on Capitol Hill led us to put the shoe on the other foot.
It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years.
Meanwhile, Obama attended the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan in March 2007, although he used the opportunity to ask Gen. James L. Jones, then the commander of NATO, about Pakistan.
Jones also came before the Senate Armed Services Committee that week. But McCain was a no-show.
The findings are surprising given the fact that the McCain campaign loudly criticized Obama this week for failing to schedule any hearings on Afghanistan in the last year and a half. Obama chairs the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of military operations in Afghanistan.
“As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there,” Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a McCain surrogate and ranking member of Obama's subcommittee wrote in a letter to the Illinois senator. “The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
Of the three Afghanistan-related hearings that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has had over the past 22 months, Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, has only attended one.
Meanwhile, DeMint, who most recently attacked Obama over Afghanistan, didn't attend any. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, missed one of the Afghanistan hearings too -- while he was in the midst of his own presidential campaign.
A review of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings as listed on the committee Web site for the past two years reveals that McCain's committee has held six hearings that included the word "Afghanistan" in the title or Central Command -- which overseas U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
McCain missed them all.
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/hearing-gate-ex.html