Was on a conference call with the Pennsylvania Senator that ended half an hour ago and here’s what he said:

On a blogger conference call this afternoon, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) announced he can’t support a potential addition of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “We ought not to add troops in Afghanistan,” Specter said, adding that he questioned “even staying” in Afghanistan unless the administration demonstrates that continuing the war is “indispensable to our fight against al-Qaeda.” His position, he said, came as a result of extensive consultations with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the intelligence community, as well as antipathy to the government of Hamid Karzai.

I was the impolite one:

Specter claimed that his opponent in the Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial primary, Rep. Joe Sestak, was calling for a “major measured increase” in troops — Sestak himself, however, has said he endorsed a “measured increase” in a recent Fox News interview — but when I asked if politics was playing any role in his position, he replied, “None. None.” When I asked why it seemed he was only speaking out lately despite years of deterioration in Afghanistan, Specter replied that he had expressed concern about the Afghanistan war “several months ago,” which I think is a reference to this September Senate floor statement that indeed raised questions about “the prospects for military success in Afghanistan against al-Qaida and the Taliban.” He continued to say that “as Afghanistan has become a hot topic over the course of the last several months” and has become “relevant for congressional response, I have made it.”

Update: I messed up. Checking my recording, Specter indeed used the adjective “measured,” not “major,” to describe Sestak’s Afghanistan position. Apologies. You can understand how I would have misheard that, right?