Obama blasts Bush, McCain over attacks

Sen. Barack Obama slammed President Bush on Friday for launching "exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world."

He also took a shot at Sen. John McCain for "embracing" the president's "attacks on Democrats," and "suggesting that I wasn't fit to protect this nation that I love."

"So much for civility," Obama said at a town hall meeting in Watertown, South Dakota, noting that McCain had talked about the need for civility in politics earlier Thursday.

Obama was responding to Bush's remarks in Israel on Thursday that some want to "appease" the terrorists. White House officials denied Obama was a target of Bush's remarks. But privately, White House aides indicated the criticism was aimed at various Democrats, including Obama and former President Jimmy Carter.

In speaking at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state, Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement."

Later Friday, at a press conference, Obama criticized Bush's speech again, saying, "The speech yesterday wasn't about an actual policy argument, it was about politics ... about trying to scare the American people. And that's what will not work in this election."

"Who is this 'some' that they were talking about? ... Was this just a straw man that they were setting up? And if so ... what was the purpose of the remarks? I'm less concerned about whether the remarks were being directed against me personally, because frankly there is no evidence out there that I've ever suggested that we should engage terrorists. So obviously, it didn't apply to me."

Obama added McCain wants to "double down" on Bush's "failed policies," and that the senator "still hasn't spelled out one substantial way in which he would be different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy."

"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I'm happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for," he said