I'll see your Iraq and raise you a secret invasion

There was a debate tonight. McCain likes to say he was a maverick and 'opposed' president Bush on many things. McCain had pushed a point, that Obama was wrong to say he would carry out military missions in Pakistan. He said the line 'you don't say that publicly'. He also seemed to confuse attacking Pakistan with anti-terror missions that take place in Pakistan. It wasn't entirely clear which he was talking about but it seemd like he was referring to attacking the country of Pakistan during his whole talk on it. He then says, that if you do attack Pakistan, you do it in secret. His idea of the proper way to do things when you start a war is to do it in secret. He repeated it just a short while later, that if he were to attack Pakistan he would do it in secret. At least GW had the decency to pretend like he was giving us a choice with Iraq. Which as bad as it is is prefereable to 'oh hey by the way I started a war last night, hope you don't mind.' Worse than Bush continied, that kind of thinking is Bush squared.

An update: transcript exerpts

We've got to get the support of the people of -- of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.

Now, you don't do that. You don't say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.

...

So we've got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I'm confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command, that we will employ a strategy which not only means additional troops -- and, by the way, there have been 20,000 additional troops, from 32,000 to 53,000, and there needs to be more.

So it's not just the addition of troops that matters. It's a strategy that will succeed. And Pakistan is a very important element in this. And I know how to work with him. And I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I'm going to attack them.

Another Update: More related details on this subject are here at Thinkprogress