McCain, Obama differ on how to tackle another 9/11

New York, Sept.18 : The two presidential candidates - John McCain (Republican) and Barack Obama (Democrat), it seems, have contrasting positions on how to deal with incidents like 9/11, should they occur again in the immediate future.

McCain told CBS News that as president, he would like to get both Republicans and Democrats on one platform to deal with a calamity of this nature in a unified way.

"I think that we ought to have a closer relationship, probably, between Republican and Democrat on this. When we let our intelligence capability to monitor communications amongst would-be terrorists ... or terrorists and we were gridlocked for so long, is an indication that, perhaps, we've lost the unity that characterized America after 9/11. So, I would work more closely with the leaders of Congress. I know them well. But I also think that we should unleash more of America's technology," said McCain.

Obama on the other hand said too much attention was being paid by Washington to the conflict in Iraq, and this has allowed terrorist outfits like Al Qaeda and fundamentally rabid Islamic entities like the Taliban to regroup in safe havens in Afghanistan and other countries. He said that as president he would like to correct the way Washington deals with homeland security and intelligence, and get rid of these safe havens.

"The problem is when we got distracted by Iraq. We gave al Qaeda time to reconstitute itself. And we now know, based on all the intelligence available to us that they, in fact, have set up safe havens back in Afghanistan, the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are now carrying out very aggressive actions against U.S. troops in Afghanistan and they are training to attack the United States once again," said Obama.

"So now, my hope obviously is that we continue to prevent them from being able to move at all out of those safe havens. But our intelligence indicates ... that the danger, the likelihood, of a potential attack is significantly higher now. And that has been an enormous mistake that I intend to correct when I'm president of the United States," he added.

When McCain referred to the use of more technology, he said all kinds of technologies are being developed in American labs, and a part of that technology was human intelligence.

"We still haven't got the kind of human intelligence that can tell us the intentions of the enemy," he said.

ANI