Obama and Pakistan

Ok, so I was listening to Thom Hartman today, who I generally like, and he jumped all over Senator Obama for his assertion that as president he would even consider going into Pakistan to track down Al Queida and Bin Laden. Obama's initial statement: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will." To me that sounds like a fair policy. But unfortunately Obama is taking alot of heat for this statement. Well ok, he did say a few things the next day that may have turned up the heat a little. He should not have responded to the "even nuclear?" question. But even then he should have avoided the equivocating, "let me scratch that," answer that he gave.

What I truly find puzzling here is that there is any question about how we would handle actionable intelligence on the where abouts of Bin Laden. Every candidate, republican and democrat should say exactly what Obama said at first. "If we have a lead on where Bin Laden is and the that nation's government won't act, then we will." Or "If there is an Al Queida training camp in Wajiristan, and Musharraf won't shut it down, then we will."

The other part that puzzles me is that Obama is catching hell from the other candidates.
Mitt Romney, "I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours...I don't think those kind of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort." When asked about how to handle Iran, Romney told a Florida he would “make sure we use every power we can to make sure Iran doesn’t become nuclear.” But no one asked him if that included using Nukes.
John McCain: ""I think it's kind of a simplistic view of a very complex situation," This from a man whose foreign policy approach to Iran is "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran."
Hilary Clinton: Criticizes Obama's equivocating on Nukes by well, equivocating on Nukes." And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons."
John Edwards seems to understand though: ""I think we should be maximizing pressure on them (Pakistan) and then, depending on what they do, we'll make a judgment about what needs to be done. But ... it is true that the president of the United States has to find terrorists where they are and stop them." Of course Obama's initial statement somehow seemed much more succinct than that though.

I guess what boggles my mind is that people are willing to accept and even promote a war against a country that did not attack us, (Iran, Iraq) but they get nervous about stepping on the toes of a supposed ally who is harboring the people who did actually attack us.