The McCain campaign is hitting back at a widely-circulated Washington Post Op ed published today by foreign policy expert Jamie Rubin.

Rubin claims that McCain said in a 2006 interview with Rubin that we have to "deal with" Hamas -- in seeming contradiction with his attacks on Obama.

According to Rubin, McCain said of Hamas: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another."

That would seem to be at odds, at least in spirit, with McCain's pronouncement yesterday that Obama is unfit to defend America based on his willingness to negotiate with hostile foreign powers.

But the McCain camp claims that there's no contradiction here at all.

"John McCain's position is clear and has always been clear, the President of the United States should not unconditionally meet with leaders of Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah," McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds said in a statement.

The statement continued: "Barack Obama has made his position equally clear, and has pledged to meet unconditionally with Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders of other rogue regimes."

It's true that "deal with" (McCain's formulation above) is not the same as "willing to meet with during the first year with no preconditions" (Obama's formulation with regard to countries like Iran and North Korea).

Nonetheless, the McCain campaign is fudging the facts in this statement. Obama has never, ever said that the United States should "unconditionally meet with" leaders of Hamas or Hezbollah, as this statement clearly tries to imply (without quite saying).

In fact, Obama has explicitly said that we should only meet with Hamas "if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by past agreements."