Factcheck.org On the Cleveland Debate

Both candidates have positions on NAFTA that are practically indistinguishable. Both stated, when questioned during the debate, that they would threaten to withdraw from NAFTA unless Mexico and Canada agree to negotiate better terms. Both have expressed general support for free trade and its economic benefits, and both have said that NAFTA is a flawed agreement that needs to be renegotiated and, in the meantime, better enforced. Both have sent mailings to Ohio voters that use selective quotes (and in the case of an Obama mailer, a false quote) in an attempt to paint their opponent falsely as a NAFTA cheerleader. Both did it again during the debate.

Clinton was correct to say that she had been "a critic" of NAFTA during her time as first lady, at least according to her biographers. But that was in private; publicly she expressed qualified support for the trade deal, and she didn't publicly criticize it until after leaving the White House.

Obama was also correct, but only up to a point, in quoting Clinton as saying something positive about NAFTA even long after the Clinton administration was over. She did say at a 2004 news teleconference that "I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and good for America," which by the way is what many economists also say. What Obama left out, as we noted before, is that Clinton also said at the same event that "I've always thought" that past trade deals should be revisited, that "I think that we need a re-thinking of our trade policies,"  that "we have a really important stake in trying to make sure that labor and environmental standards become global," and that "I think we have to enforce the trade rules that are inherent in both NAFTA and GATT."

Bombs Away!
Clinton claimed, "Last summer [Obama] basically threatened to bomb Pakistan." Obama denied that: "I never said I would bomb Pakistan."

He's right. What he really said on Aug. 1, 2007, was this: "It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Furthermore, as Obama also noted, that's pretty much what the U.S. did recently. On Feb. 1, several news organizations quoted official sources saying that a CIA airstrike in Pakistan killed Abu Laith al-Libi, who once was 4th on the "most wanted" list of a military anti-terrorism task force. The strike, incidentally, was by a remote-controlled Predator drone using missiles, not by crewed bombers.

Obama's War Flip-Flop?
Clinton claimed that in 2004 Obama "was saying that he basically agreed with the way George Bush was conducting the war."

She is referencing a July 27, 2004, quote in the Chicago Tribune, in which Obama did indeed say of the Iraq war that "[t]here's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage" (our emphasis). But Clinton quoted him selectively. In that same interview, Obama also reiterated that he would not have voted for the war, and he offered serious criticism of Bush's handling of it, saying, "I don't see them having the credibility to be able to execute." And in a New York Times interview given the day before, Obama said that "from my vantage point, the case was not made" for the war, and he rebuked Democratic leaders for "the degree to which Congress gave the president a pass" on proving the case for the war.

As Clinton herself pointed out during the debate, the two candidates have identical voting records on the war since they both have been in the Senate. Furthermore, Obama's views about how to conduct the war are not significantly different from hers, and they have proposed very similar plans for ending it.

About That 100-year "War"
Obama twisted the words of John McCain, the likely Republican nominee:

Obama: We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years.