he said it

Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 (Washington)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois Senator warned Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a US troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid.

''Let me make this clear,'' Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

''There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.''