Sen. Barack Obama fired back after John McCain lobbed the first verbal grenade over at him and Sen. Hillary Clinton for voting against the war-funding bill last night. But McCain (R-Az.), wants the last word, too.
After McCain said the votes were "equivalent of waving a white flag to al Qaeda," Obama (D-Ill.) released a statement blasting the Republican for believing "the course we are on in Iraq is working."
"And if there ever was a reflection of that, it's the fact that Senator McCain required a flack jacket, ten armored Humvees, two Apache attack helicopters, and 100 soldiers with rifles by his side to stroll through a market in Baghdad just a few weeks ago," Obama said, according to Hotline On Call.
McCain's retort:
"While Senator Obama's two years in the U.S. Senate certainly entitle him to vote against funding our troops, my service and experience combined with conversations with military leaders on the ground in Iraq lead me to believe that we must give this new strategy a chance to succeed because the consequences of failure would be catastrophic to our nation's security."
He added: "By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket."

-- Christina Bellantoni, Capitol Hill correspondent, The Washington Times