McCain Team Falsely Charges That Obama Opposes Capital Punishment For Bin Laden

[Hope And Change]

McCain Team Falsely Charges That Obama Opposes Capital Punishment For Bin Laden

By http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/profile/sargent">Greg Sargent - June 19, 2008, 11:01AM

The McCain campaign kept up its attacks on Barack Obama as weak on terror for the third day in a row today, falsely charging on a conference call that Obama opposes capital punishment for Osama Bin Laden.

On the call, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann reached this conclusion by a curiously circuitous logical route. It went a little something like this: Yesterday, Scheunemann pointed out, Obama http://thepage.time.com/transcript-of-obamas-presser-in-washington-dc/">said that Bin Laden should be captured in such a way that doesn't "make him into a martyr."

"The last I checked, a martyr is someone who dies for a cause or someone who is killed for a cause," Scheunemann said. "It seems that Senator Obama is ruling out capital punishment."

Actually, Obama has explicitly said that he doesn't oppose capital punishment for Bin Laden. In July of 2007, he said (via Nexis) that after a trial that observed "international standards of due process," Bin Laden would qualify for execution.

"At that point, do I think that somebody who killed 3,000 Americans qualifies as someone who has perpetrated heinous crimes, and would qualify for the death penalty? Then yes," Obama said.

Not that facts matter, of course.


http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/mccain_team_says_obama_opposes.php">Link

[ingac70]

1. How do we execute a guy who has been dead since '01?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

[Bolo Boffin]

2. A better case could be made for John McCain opposing capital punishment for bin Laden.

After all, he and George Bush decided to take the fight to Iraq instead of pressing forward in Afghanstan and bringing bin Laden to justice.

[ieoeja]

3. *I* certainly oppose it.

Do Republics not understand the concept of martyrdom?

He does not deserve the dignity of the grave. He should get the exact same treatment as the Blind Sheik. Solitary confinement, with no contact with the outside world, for a very long life.

Let him be forgotten. Not martyred. Osama who?

[TexasObserver]

4. McCain's campaign is like a grumpy, hard of hearing old man, who reacts to what he thought he heard.

This is now happening several times a week.