FLASHBACK !008: McCain, Clinton Slam Obama For Saying He'd Go Get .

aid to Pakistan conditional: "Pakistan must have real advancement in shutting down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan."

He continued: I see that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me clear this clear: There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a dreadful mistake to go to act when we had a risk to carry out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will.

For Obama's campaign opponents, the comments became an example of the thought that Obama was too inexperienced to be president - both for having the theme of playing without Pakistan's permission, and for being green enough to separate people around it.

On February 19, 2008, McCain spoke at a victory party for his win in the Wisconsin primary, and wondered: "Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?"

The next day, he called Obama "naive" and doubled down: "The foremost thing you do is, you don't say people what you're gonna to do. You have plans and you bring with the former country that is your friend and friend, which Pakistan is."

"You don't send and say that you're going to bombard a state without their permission or without consulting them. It's just fundamentals of the behavior of internal security policy," McCain added.

In a Democratic primary debate on February 26, 2008, Hillary Clinton picked up thememe: "Last summer, he basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to take."

During the general election, McCain continued to trump the same point. At a September 26 debate, McCain said: "I'm not inclined at this sentence to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I'm not prepared to threaten it, as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan."

"Now, you don't do that. You don't say that out loud," McCain said. "If you get to do things, you get to do things, and you go with the Pakistani government."

"Nobody talked about attacking Pakistan," Obama replied. "Here's what I said, and if John wants to differ with this, he can let me know: That, if the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is ineffective or unwilling to act, then we should engage them out. Now, I believe that's the correct strategy; I believe that's the proper policy."

And so there was the township hall on October 7, 2008. Obama answered a query about Pakistan with his now-familiar refrain: "And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is ineffective or unwilling to bring them out, then I mean that we give to act and we will make them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority."

McCain followed that up "in fact, [Obama] said he wants to declare that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable."

"If you are a state and you're trying to make the back of another country, then you need to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion," he added. "When you announce that you're going to found an attack into another country, it's fairly obvious that you get the event that it had in Pakistan: It turns public sentiment against us."

Obama fired back: "I need to be very open about what I said. Nobody called for the intrusion of Pakistan. Senator McCain continues to duplicate this."

"What I said was the like matter that the consultation here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is ineffective or unwilling to run down bin Laden and bring him out, then we should," he said.

Here's a look back:

After word broke that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan, Sen. McCain did offer praise for Obama. When asked Monday evening whether President Bush is receiving enough credit for bin Laden's death, McCain said: "I remember President Bush is being credit[ed] and he deserved credit, but I too think President Obama and his team deserve great credit as well. President Obama made the conclusion to go in the way they did and that obviously turned out to be an excellent decision."

Additional reporting by Benjy Sarlin.