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10:20 p.m. McCain seriously mistated his vote concerning the marines in Lebanon. He said that when he went into Congress in 1983, he voted against deploying them in Beirut. The Marines went in Lebanon in 1982, before McCain came to Congress. The vote came up a year into their deployment, when the Marines had already suffered 54 casualties. What McCain voted against was a measure to invoke the War Powers Act and to authorize the deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon for an additional 18 months. The measure passed 270-161, with 26 other Republicans (including McCain) and 134 Democrats voting against it. —Glenn Kessler 10:12 p.m. McCain accused Obama of wanting to stage “military strikes” inside Pakistan, which is a misleading account of what Obama famously said in 2007: That he would be willing to go after Al Qaeda targets inside that country with or without the approval of the Pakistani authorities. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said. —Michael Abramowitz 10:02 p.m. When discussuing what ways he would save money in the federal budget, McCain said, “Look, we’re sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don’t like us very much.” This is a line he used in his campaign acceptance speech, but as a matter of context he was not talking about foreign aid. That only amounts to $39 bllion a year, most of which is economic aid. McCain instead is talking about the amount of money that Americans spend on foreign oil, though some experts think that figure is a bit high. It certainly is not part of the federal budget. —Glenn Kessler 9:58 p.m. In a contentious exchange, John McCain said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had called Barack Obama’s Iraqi troop withdrawal plan dangerous, a charge Obama strenuously called untrue. In fact, in July, Mullen, addressing a plan that would remove all combat troops by 2010, did say on Fox News, “I think the consequences could be very dangerous. I’m convinced that making reductions based on conditions on the ground are very important.” —Jonathan Weisman 9:54 p.m. Obama and McCain got into a little argument over whether the Illinois senator has oversight responsibility for Afghanistan in the U.S. Senate. Obama is the chairman of the Europe sub-committee of the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee. Obama’s sub-committee is responsible for NATO affairs. Since NATO has troops in Afghanistan, McCain can claim that Obama’s committee has an interest in what is happening in Afghanistan. It is true that he did not hold hearings of the sub-committee while he was out on the campaign trail. On the other hand, Obama can claim that his sub-committee is not primarily responsible for Afghanistan. Another sub-committee has oversight responsibility for the South Asian region. —Michael Dobbs 9:52 p.m. John McCain correctly asserted that in 2003 he began to question the Iraq war strategy, which is correct. In November 2003, he criticized the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, saying the United States should send at least 15,000 more troops or risk “the most serious American defeat on the global stage since Vietnam.” But he has also made later, more rosy pronouncements. After visiting the Shorja market in Baghdad in April 2007, where he was protected by more than 100 soldiers, McCain said, “Things are getting better in Iraq, and I am pleased with the progress that has been made.” Privately, according to a recent book by Bob Woodward, he was more critical, telling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “We may be about to lose the second war in my lifetime.” —Glenn Kessler 9:50 p.m. During the debate, McCain once again took credit for his crusade to block a new contract for Boeing for a new fleet of midair refueling tankers. He said he saved taxpayers more than $6 billion while launching a Senate probe that found cozy relations between Pentagon officials and Boeing executives. But the GAO found significant problems in the rebidding of the new contract, which had awarded the contract to a partnership between Northrup Grumman and the European firm EADS. “This shows how a sort of naive crusade for good government can actually backfire,” Loren Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank, told Newsweek. —Michael Abramowitz 9:45 p.m. John McCain raised an old Republican canard, repeated often in the primaries, when he claimed that Obama’s health care plan would eventually turn the health care system over to the federal government. The Illinois senator proposes helping individuals purchase health insurance through a system of subsidies and tax credits. He is also in favor of mandatory health insurance for children. But he is not advocating a state-run health system, such as the one that exists in Britain and some European countries. Under the Obama plan, individuals will still be free to choose between different types of health insurance, and will be able to choose their own doctors. —Michael Dobbs 9:39 p.m. McCain, rebutting Obama’s correct observation that earmarks are a small part of the budget, said, “But the point is, that you see, i hear this all the time. It’s only $18 billion. Do you know that it’s tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it’s gone completely out of control to the point where it corrupts people?” But while federal earmarks tripled in size from 1996 to 2005, they have actually dropped in recent years. According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, in fiscal year 2005 Congress inserted 13,492 earmarks totaling $18.9 billion for appropriations accounts. In fiscal year 2008, there were 11,524 earmarks totaling $16.5 billion for appropriations accounts. —Glenn Kessler 9:33 p.m. John McCain claimed that Obama voted in the Senate to raise taxes on anyone making more than $42,000 a year. This is misleading on several levels. The vote that McCain is talking about was a non-binding resolution on the budget that envisioned letting the Bush tax cuts to expire, as scheduled, in 2011. But these budget resolutions come up every year, and do not represent a vote for higher taxes in future years. In fact, Obama has said that he will continue the Bush tax cuts for middle and low-income taxpayers. He says that he will cut taxes for all but the wealthiest tax-payers. —Michael Dobbs 9:21 p.m. John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the allied invasion of Normandy as “the greatest invasion” in history. Such historical comparisons are always dangerous. In scale, the D-Day landings were far exceeded by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, in June 1941, and the Soviet invasion of Germany at the end of World War II. A total of 326,000 allied troops took part in the initial D-day Landings in June 1944. By comparison, Hitler’s sent an army of 4.5 million men into the Soviet Union in June 1941along a 1,800 mile front. —Michael Dobbs