Responding to the McCain campaign's attack on Obama's remarks on battling terrorism, the Obama campaign responded with biting remarks of its own from two of its surrogates, Sen. John Kerry and former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke.

In a conference call with reporters, Kerry said McCain has "fully embraced the failed troubled policies of the Bush administration over the last seven and a half years. He's defending policies that are really indefensible. ... The measure of that is in the reality on the ground in what is happening globally."

Clarke said he was "disgusted" by the McCain campaign's attempt to paint Obama as "weak" on terrorism, when in fact, with the assistance of his own advising, Obama has a comprehensive counter-terrorism plan, something he says McCain does not have.

"To do this, to drive a wedge between Americans for partisan advantage, and to frankly frighten Americans -- they're saying, as they have before, that the Democratic candidate favors purely a law enforcement approach," Clarke said. "They said that about the Clinton administration, they said that about Senator Kerry, and they said that now about Senator Obama. I'd like them to show where in the record Senator Obama has ever said that he's in favor of pure law enforcement approach."

Referring to the recent Supreme Court ruling that gave Guantanamo Bay detainees the rights to due process, Clarke said, "There's absolutely no reason to believe we couldn't have done things constitutionally. Terrorists in the past have been arrested. Terrorists in the past have been given court hearings, found guilty by juries and sentenced to jail. So there's no reason to assume that using constitutional means to get wiretaps or constitutional means to interrogate people doesn't work."

Kerry called the McCain campaign's comments about Obama a "phony argument," and said, "The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights. This is not Barack Obama. This is the Supreme Court of the United States. If John McCain were president he would have to give them those rights."

"This is a completely fraudulent fear-tactic, scare-tactic played on the lowest-common-denominator strategy by John McCain and his colleagues."