If it had unfolded EXACTLY as it did under a president

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And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority

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For the rest of the campaign, Senator McCain insisted that unlike Senator Obama, he would not "take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights," as this exchange with CNN's Larry King revealed:

KING: If you were president and knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, you know where, would you have U.S. forces go in after him?

MCCAIN: Larry, I'm not going to go there and here's why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. I think the Pakistanis would want bin Laden out of their hair and out of their country and it's causing great difficulties in Pakistan itself.

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(As it turns out, it wasn't just candidate Romney who got weak at the knees at the prospect of ordering unilateral U.S. strikes in Pakistan. In 2005, President Bush did as well, cancelling a special forces operation designed to "snatch and grab" Ayman Al Zawahiri and other senior Al Qaeda leaders.)

Of course, Romney's confusion about whether to respect or not respect Pakistani sovereignty may have something to do with his past reversals about whether or not killing Osama Bin Laden even mattered:

In May 2007, Romney alarmingly—and erroneously—equated Sunni and Shiite, friend and foe, the guilty and the innocent across the Islamic world.


"But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

Even regarding that "one person, Osama Bin Laden," Romney struggled. After insisting in May 2007 that "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney reversed course just three days later and declared of Bin Laden, "He's going to pay, and he will die."/quote]

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In 2008, Obama vowed to kill Osama bin Laden

By Bill Adair on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 11:26 p.m.


UPDATE, 12:45 p.m.: We've now posted a new promise in our Obameter database for the vow to kill Osama bin Laden. We' ve rated it Promise Kept.

As news leaked out that Osama bin Laden had been killed, many PolitiFact readers have pointed out President Obama's vow to kill him in during an October 2008 debate. They have asked us to add it to our Obameter and rate it Promise Kept. We'll be examining whether to do so.

In the meantime, here's the full text of the question and answer from the Oct. 7, 2008, debate in Nashville, Tenn., which was moderated by Tom Brokaw:

MR. BROKAW: Senator McCain, thank you very much.

Next question for Senator Obama. It comes from the F Section, and it's from Katie Hamm. Katie?

Q Should the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and not pursue al-Qaida terrorists who maintain bases there, or should we ignore their borders and pursue our enemies, like we did in Cambodia during the Vietnam War?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, Katie, it's a terrific question.

And we have a difficult situation in Pakistan. I believe that part of the reason we have a difficult situation is because we made a bad judgment going into Iraq in the first place when we hadn't finished the job of hunting down bin Laden and crushing al-Qaida.

So what happened was we got distracted, we diverted resources, and ultimately bin Laden escaped, set up base camps in the mountains of Pakistan in the northwest provinces there.

They are now raiding our troops in Afghanistan, destabilizing the situation. They're stronger now than at any time since 2001. And that's why I think it's so important for us to reverse course because that's the central front on terrorism.

They are plotting to kill Americans right now. As Secretary Gates, the Defense secretary, said, the war against terrorism began in that region, and that's where it will end.

So part of the reason I think it's so important for us to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan, put more pressure on the Afghan government to do what it needs to do, eliminate some of the drug trafficking that's funding terrorism.

But I do believe that we have to change our policies with Pakistan. We can't coddle, as we did, a dictator, give him billions of dollars, and then he's making peace treaties with the Taliban and militants.

What I have said is we're going encourage democracy in Pakistan, And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out.

We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priorityexpand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

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