headline stories from AP:
In Germany, Obama urges joint fight against terror
BERLIN - Before the largest crowd of his campaign, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.
"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.
"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand," he said.
Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics. His remarks inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and he borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences in the likes of Berlin, N.H., when he addressed a crowd in one of the great cities of Europe.
"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he said.
Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe designed to reassure skeptical voters back home about his ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.
Republicans chafed at the media attention Obama's campaign-season trip has drawn. Presidential rival John McCain went to a German restaurant in swing-state Ohio, and said he'd like to deliver a speech in Germany, but as president not candidate.
In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., wrote: "No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological, left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?"
Obama met earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a discussion that ranged across the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change, energy issues and more.
Knots of bystanders waited along Obama's motorcade route for him to pass. One man yelled out in English, "Yes, we can," the senator's campaign refrain, when he emerged from his car to enter his hotel.
Obama drew loud applause as he strode confidently across a large podium erected at the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the heart of Berlin.
The crowd spilled away from the Column for blocks. Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said the speech drew more than 200,000 people, more than double the estimated 75,000 Obama drew in Oregon this spring.
He drew loud applause when he talked of a world without nuclear weapons and again when he called for steps to counter climate change.
Obama mentioned Iraq, a war he has opposed from the start, only in passing. But in discussing Afghanistan, he said, "no one welcomes war. ... But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success."
He referred repeatedly to the Berlin airlift, launched by the Allies 60 years ago when the Russians sought to isolate the Western part of the city. If they had succeeded, he said, communism would have marched across Europe.
"Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun," the presidential candidate said.
Now, he said, the enemy is different but the need for an alliance is the same as the world stares down terrorism and the extremism that supports it. "This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it," he said.
He said Europeans sometimes view America as "part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right ..." And in America, "there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future."
He said both views miss the truth, "that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe."
In any event, he said, there will always be differences.
"But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more, not less."
McCain visits German restaurant — in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican presidential candidate John McCain had his own German experience Thursday — at a restaurant in Ohio. He asserted that he was happy to devote his time this week to touring the nation's heartland.
"I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president," McCain told reporters after a meal of bratwurst with local business leaders at Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus' German Village neighborhood.
As Barack Obama delivered a high-profile speech in Berlin, McCain said he was focusing his attention this week on economic issues, including soaring food and fuel costs. He has been busy campaigning and raising funds in key battleground states like Ohio.
In what was clearly not a coincidence, McCain spoke with reporters shortly before Obama began his speech at Berlin's Victory Column.
At the same time, The Republican National Committee was running anti-Obama ads in Berlin, Pa., and other namesake villages in Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
McCain is trying hard to get attention during Obama's week abroad. He had planned to visit an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, but rough seas leftover from Hurricane Dolly caused him to scrub that trip. He was to appear with famed cyclist Lance Armstrong later Thursday at a town-hall meeting here that is focused on cancer. And on Friday, he'll meet with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, in Aspen, Colo.
He said he regretted not being able to make the trip to the drilling rig, a visit intended to emphasize his support for lifting of the ban on offshore drilling. President Bush earlier this month rescinded an executive order reinforcing the congressional ban, but Congress must act as well for the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling to be abolished.
"I'm sorry Congress is gridlocked again on offshore drilling," McCain said. "When I'm president, we'll all sit down together and work this out."
On Europe, where Obama has been meeting with leaders, McCain said cultivating good relations with a new generation of European leaders was important . "A lot of these leaders are a lot more pro-American than their predecessors were," he said.
The Arizona senator defended his assertions that Obama was more interested in winning a campaign than winning the war in Iraq. Democrats have suggested McCain went overboard, implying that the Illinois Democrat would put the nation's children at jeopardy for political reasons.
"All of us care about our children," McCain said. "I stand by my comments."
McCain has complained that Obama's support for a fixed timetable to withdraw troops ignores recent progress made under President Bush's troop buildup.
"It's clear Sen. Obama doesn't understand what's at stake here. It's pretty obvious he's taken this position to secure the nomination of his party."
Of Friday's meeting with the Dalai Lama in Colorado, McCain called the Tibetan spiritual leader "a transcendent national role-model."
"I have been a great admirer of the Dalai Lama," said McCain, a sharp critic of the Chinese crackdown in the Tibetan region.
Ohio is a key swing state. Recent polls have suggested a close contest between Obama and McCain. President Bush narrowly defeated Democrat John Kerry here in 2004, and some Democrats have suggested that voting irregularities that favored Republicans helped swing the election Bush's way.
German Village is in the 15th congressional district, held by Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce. It encompasses most of the city of Columbus and its southern and western suburbs. Pryce won in the last congressional election by a narrow margin.
Before settling down to lunch, McCain bounded through the crowded restaurant shaking hands and posing for photographs with lunchtime patrons.
He was overheard remarking on the "great sausages here." The restaurant's specialties are "Bahama Mama" bratwurst and cream puffs.
"Can we have a couple of cream puffs to go, too?" he asked.
Poster's Comment:
One actually Goes to Germany, the Other Goes to a German Restarant.
One is a Statesman, the Other is a phoney.
One Puts forth an effort to polish the Image of the United States, the other could give a shit less about the image of the United States.