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DeMint presses Obama on Afghanistan |
Democratic candidate’s campaign says S.C. senator’s actions ‘politically motivated’WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint injected himself into the presidential debate on national security by writing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama a letter Tuesday urging the two senators hold hearings on Afghanistan.On Tuesday, DeMint made a high-profile appearance with Sen. John McCain’s senior foreign policy aides as McCain and Obama delivered speeches laying out sharply differing views on Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader U.S. effort to defeat fundamentalist Muslim forces.Obama is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on European affairs, and DeMint is its senior Republican member. The subcommittee has jurisdiction to convene hearings on Afghanistan because NATO troops there are allied with U.S. forces.“The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat al- Qaida and the Taliban,” DeMint wrote Obama. “As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there.”
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