Barack Obama said in a speech today he’d be tougher than Bush on Pakistan, and that
he'd like to see the US troops that ought to be withdrawn from Iraq redeployed in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan—with or without an invitation, the AP reports. The freshman senator said the US wimped out when it bowed to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf on strikes on al-Qaeda targets.
Obama, regrouping after a bruising clash with Hillary Clinton last week left him looking dovish, insisted in today's speech that if “Musharraf won’t act, we will.” ABC's Jake Tapper sees the speech as an attempt to position Obama as a president who would pursue a muscular foreign policy and protect the US from terrorist attack. (More Barack Obama stories.)