Soldier and child

Photo: Warren Zinn, Army Times - AP (h/t C&L)

"Doc" Joseph P. Dwyer, the soldier in the Warren Zinn photo. R.I.P.

On ABC's This Week Joe Lieberman suggested Barack Obama is changing his position on removing combat troops from Iraq, implying Obama now agrees with Joe's buddy McCain that Iraq is the central front on the war on terror -- and we're winning (h/t C&L).

Completely contradicting Joe, Fred Barnes was on Fox News trying to diminish the importance of Afghanistan (h/t Attaturk), it's escalating violence notwithstanding, because he fears the opposite, that Obama will take troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, where we're, uh, not winning.

Which is it, guys?

Too much of the media spent last week echoing the McCain campaign's misdirection that Obama was opening the door to retaining combat troops in Iraq. But the Boston Globe sorts it out and simplifies the essential Obama/McCain difference:

Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and McCain, his Republican counterpart, both recently outlined their visions for solving the crisis.

If elected, Obama says, he would immediately withdraw thousands of ground troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to help undermanned US forces defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

"It's time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan," Obama said in a speech last week. "It is time to go after the Al Qaeda leadership where it actually exists."

. . .

However, McCain, a former fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, says Iraq, not Afghanistan, is the "central front" in the war on terrorism. He believes that NATO and Pakistan must do more in Afghanistan until the United States can draw down its commitment in Iraq - a position which tracks Bush administration strategy.

The Arizona senator and his foreign policy team warn that pulling US forces from Iraq would embolden Islamic extremists around the world and strengthen Al Qaeda as a national security threat.

McCain's surrogates are worried about this difference, because Obama's position gains support from senior military officials, who have repeatedly explained that our troop commitment to Iraq is shorting the Afghanistan effort.

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq," Admiral Michael G. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon last week. Mullen said the Afghanistan campaign has been running short of troops since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign," he said, "which by definition means we need more forces there."

With all the negative news coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan lately -- including deadly bombings on Friday and Sunday in which the Americans claims "insurgents" were killed, while the Afghan authorities claim the victims were civilians -- the McCain surrogates are trying hard to keep the media and voters focused on Iraq and not the consequences of their Iraq policies everywhere else.

It's the same misdirection McCain advocated when he and the Bush regime misled the country into the disastrous Iraq war in the first place. To obscure that strategic blunder, he's doubling down in Iraq, hoping US and NATO forces in Afghanistan can hold on just long enough for McCain and Bush to avoid taking responsibility for both mistakes.

And he's hoping the public will not notice our invasion essentially destroyed much of Iraq and continues its tragic toll on American troops.