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Obama AWOL on Afghanistan Hearings

3:46 PM, Jul 17, 2008 • By JOHN MCCORMACK
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Earlier this week, Jim DeMint criticized Barack Obama for not holding any hearings on Afghanistan and NATO as the chairman European Affairs Subcommittee. Today, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden wrote a letter to DeMint in defense of Obama. These hearings were held at the "full committee level," Biden wrote. "On the particular issue of NATO's mission in Afghanistan ... We have held three Full Committee hearings in the last 22 months[.]"

But it turns out that Biden's letter may have backfired (shocking, I know). As Jake Tapper reports:

Biden's letter brought attention to the fact that Obama did not attend two of those three hearings -- and for the third, on March 8, 2007, Obama only asked one question, one unrelated to Afghanistan.

How do I know the latter fact? From an August 2007 press release from Biden himself, when he was running for president.

"BIDEN CAMPAIGN CONGRATULATES SEN. OBAMA FOR JOHNNY-COME-LATELY POSITION," it read. Noting that at the March 2007 hearing, "Sen. Obama asked one question that was unrelated to Taliban or Afghanistan."

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