John McCain attacks Obama on decisions abroad

TAMPA — Addressing a packed convention hall on this 76th birthday, U.S. Sen. John McCain, a GOP presidential candidate in 2000 and 2008, focused the bulk of his remarks on foreign policy and conflicts abroad, saying it was Mitt Romney whom he trusted with life and death decisions.

“I trust Mitt Romney to know that good can triumph over evil, that justice can vanquish tyranny, that love can conquer hate, that the desire for freedom is eternal and universal, and that America is still the best hope of mankind,” McCain said.

It was the seventh time that McCain, who spoke on his birthday Wednesday, had addressed a political convention.

McCain, whose remarks came on the second night of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, blamed President Obama for failures abroad, including in Iran, where McCain said Obama “missed a historic opportunity,” to throw the country’s support behind the Iranian revolution.

“We are now being tested by an array of threats that are more complex, more numerous and just as deadly as any I can recall in my lifetime,” McCain (R-Arizona) said. “We face a consequential choice – and make no mistake, it is a choice.”

He cited a 2009 incident known world-wide when a woman named Neda was shot and bled to death in a street in Tehran.

McCain said Obama failed in a major way:

“The president missed a historic opportunity to throw America’s full moral support behind an Iranian revolution that shared one of our highest interests: ridding Iran of a brutal dictatorship that terrorizes the Middle East and threatens the world.”