The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote that an ad by Sen. John McCain “is accurate in saying that [Sen. Barack] Obama, who has spent most of the past two years campaigning, has not held a hearing on Afghanistan in the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee he chairs.” But Kurtz failed to note that McCain -- a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- reportedly has not attended a single hearing of that committee related to Afghanistan in 2007-08.
Kurtz reported that McCain's ad attacking Obama on Afghanistan hearings is “accurate” but did not note McCain's record
Published
In a July 19 Washington Post article analyzing an ad by Sen. John McCain claiming that Sen. Barack Obama “never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan,” media reporter Howard Kurtz wrote that the ad “is accurate in saying that Obama, who has spent most of the past two years campaigning, has not held a hearing on Afghanistan in the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee he chairs.” But Kurtz failed to note that McCain is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but reportedly has not attended a single Armed Services Committee hearing related to Afghanistan in 2007-08.
In a July 17 post on ABC News' Political Radar blog, reporter Byron Wolf wrote:
The McCain campaign criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's hearing record on Capitol Hill led us to put the shoe on the other foot.
It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years.
Meanwhile, Obama attended the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan in March 2007, although he used the opportunity to ask Gen. James L. Jones, then the commander of NATO, about Pakistan.
Jones also came before the Senate Armed Services Committee that week. But McCain was a no-show.
The findings are surprising given the fact that the McCain campaign loudly criticized Obama this week for failing to schedule any hearings on Afghanistan in the last year and a half. Obama chairs the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of military operations in Afghanistan.
[...]
A review of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings as listed on the committee Web site for the past two years reveals that McCain's committee has held six hearings that included the word “Afghanistan” in the title or Central Command -- which overseas U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
McCain missed them all.
[...]
Update: McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers, in a statement to ABC News, argued that McCain's years of previous foreign policy experience make up for his recent lack of attendance at hearings.
“The point is that Obama claims to be a leader on Afghanistan, but had the power to hold hearings on our NATO operations there and failed to do so,” wrote Rogers in an e-mail, although he did not say why McCain missed his own Armed Services Committee hearings over the past two years.