Obama urges Germans to work with US to stop terror

By DAVID ESPO and DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writers 13 minutes ago

BERLIN - Before the largest crowd of his campaign, Democratic
presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and
Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism
that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot
stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once
divided the city.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least
cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and
immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.

Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the
evening was awash in politics. His remarks inevitably invited comparison
to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents John F. Kennedy and
Ronald Reagan, and he borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign
audiences in the likes of Berlin, N.H., when he addressed a crowd in one
of the great cities of Europe.

"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our
time," he said.

Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe
designed to reassure skeptical voters back home about his ability to
lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new
direction after eight years of the Bush administration.

Republicans, chafing at the media attention Obama's campaign-season trip
has drawn, sought to stoke doubts abut his claims.

In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich.,
said: "No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological,
left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather
than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing
coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist
who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more
from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist
hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?"

Obama met earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a
discussion that ranged across the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate
change, energy issues and more.

Knots of bystanders waited along Obama's motorcade route for him to
pass. One man yelled out in English, "Yes, we can," the senator's
campaign refrain, when he emerged from his car to enter his hotel.

Obama drew loud applause as he strode confidently across a large podium
erected at the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the
heart of Berlin.

Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said the speech drew more than
200,000 people, more than double the estimated 75,000 he drew in Oregon
this spring.

He drew loud applause when he talked of a world without nuclear weapons
and again when he called for steps to counter climate change.

Obama mentioned Iraq, a war he has opposed from the start, only in
passing. But in discussing Afghanistan, he said, "no one welcomes war.
.... But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first
mission beyond Europe's borders is a success."

He referred repeatedly to the Berlin airlift, launched by the Allies 60
years ago when the Russians sought to isolate the Western part of the
city. If they had succeeded, he said, communism would have marched
across Europe.

"Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily
begun," the presidential candidate said.

Now, he said, the enemy is different but the need for an alliance is the
same as the world stares down terrorism and the extremism that supports
it. "This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to
combat it," he said.

He said Europeans sometimes view America as "part of what has gone wrong
in our world, rather than a force to help make it right ..." And in
America, "there are voices that deride and deny the importance of
Europe's role in our security and our future."

He said both views miss the truth, "that Europeans today are bearing new
burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world;
and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to
defend the security of this continent, so does our country still
sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe."

In any event, he said, there will always be differences.

"But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A
change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this
new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more,
not less."


---------------------

And in other news:

McCain visits German restaurant — in Ohio

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican presidential candidate John McCain had his
own German experience Thursday — at a restaurant in Ohio. He asserted
that he was happy to devote his time this week to touring the nation's
heartland rather than Europe and the Middle East.

"I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as
president of the United States rather than as a candidate for
president," McCain told reporters after a meal of bratwurst with local
business leaders at Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus'
German Village neighborhood.

As Barack Obama delivered a high-profile speech in Berlin, McCain said
he was focusing his attention this week on economic issues, including
soaring food and fuel costs. He has been busy campaigning and raising
funds in key battleground states like Ohio.

In what was clearly not a coincidence, McCain spoke with reporters
shortly before Obama began his speech at Berlin's Victory Column.

At the same time, The Republican National Committee was running
anti-Obama ads in Berlin, Pa., and other namesake villages in Wisconsin
and New Hampshire.

McCain is trying hard to get attention during Obama's week abroad. He
had planned to visit an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on
Wednesday, but rough seas leftover from Hurricane Dolly caused him to
scrub that trip. He was to appear with famed cyclist Lance Armstrong
later Thursday at a town-hall meeting here that is focused on cancer.
And on Friday, he'll meet with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual
leader, in Aspen, Colo.

He said he regretted not being able to make the trip to the drilling
rig, a visit intended to emphasize his support for Congress lifting the
ban on offshore drilling.

"I'm sorry Congress is gridlocked again on offshore drilling," McCain
said. "When I'm president, we'll all sit down together and work this out."



:)

Snipped the same old empty talking points...