Obama: Republicans need to learn the lessons of 9-11, not me

A defiant Barack Obama said Tuesday he would take no lectures from Republicans on which presidential candidate would keep the US safer, a sharp rebuke to rival John McCain's aides who said the Democrat had a naive, Sept. 10 mind-set toward terrorism. "These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11," the presumed nominee told reporters aboard his campaign plane. "This is the same kind of fear-mongering that got us into Iraq ... and it's exactly that failed foreign policy I want to reverse."