McCain’s primary foe slips up on World War II history

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Arizona GOP Senate hopeful J.D. Hayworth, locked in a tough primary fight against Sen. John McCain, flubbed a key historical fact last week, asserting wrongly that the United States never declared war on Germany in World War II.

The gaffe came as Hayworth responded Thursday at a Phoenix Republican club to a question about how the U.S. came to fight armed conflicts like those in Iraq and Afghanistan without formal war declarations by Congress. Hayworth, a former congressman, voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq without such a declaration.

‘The war that Dwight Eisenhower led in Europe against the Third Reich was never declared by the United States Congress,’ Hayworth said in his response, which was broadcast live on the Internet and later posted on YouTube.

He correctly noted that the U.S. initially declared war only on Japan after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Hayworth also correctly said that Germany declared war on the U.S. a few days later.

But he missed the fact that the Americans immediately reciprocated with a declaration of war against Germany.

-- Associated Press