McCain Camp Hammers Obama Over Meeting With Foreign Leaders Without Preconditions

The McCain campaign held a conference call this afternoon criticizing Barack Obama for his comment a year ago that he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions.

If Obama is President on January 21st, the leaders of those countries will invite Obama to visit, Michigan Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra predicted on the call. "That would be an untenable position for the President of the United States to be put in," Hoekstra said.

He said that Obama "has set himself up for a performance measurement that he cannot meet," adding that the presumptive Democratic nominee "has set himself up for a policy direction that undercuts our allies."

McCain senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said that Obama's answer to a question today about whether he stands by his position from a year ago is a testament to his inexperience, stubbornness, and malleability. Obama said today in Israel that he would be willing to meet with those leaders "at my time and choosing...if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America." He said "that continues to be my position."

Obama is attempting to "rewrite history," Scheunemann said. "He takes a position calculated to appeal to the extreme left in the primaries...then he changes his position and hopes the media won't call him on it," he added.

"I guess with Obama words matter expect when they cause an inconvenient truth," said Scheunemann.