“„Obama, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European Affairs, hasn’t held any Afghanistan hearings. The full Senate Foreign Relations Committee, however, has held three hearings on Afghanistan during the past two years, and Obama attended one of them.
“„McCain’s ad fails to mention that his own record is no better. Although he’s the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he missed all sevenof the hearings that his panel held on Afghanistan during the same two years, according to ABCNews.com. (We looked through the transcripts of the hearings from Federal News Service to confirm ABC’s report, and we found statements that showed McCain was not present at two of the hearings, statements from other senators speaking on McCain’s behalf at two more hearings, and no mention of McCain whatsoever at the other three.)
“„Prior to the sole 2007 vote citedby the McCain campaign as justification for this ad, Obama voted for all war-funding bills that had come before the Senate since 2005, when he was sworn in. So did all other Senate Democrats, except for a few absences. As recently as April 2007, Obama voted in favor of funding U.S. troopsagain, but this time Democrats added a non-binding call to withdraw them from Iraq. McCain (who was absent for the vote) resident Bush did veto it, and McCain Based on those facts, it would be literally true to say that “McCain urged a veto of funding for our troops.” But that would be oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading, which is exactly the problem with McCain’s ad.