Although the Democrats officially have not settled on a choice for president, Barack Obama and the GOP’s likely nominee John McCain have been going at one another as if they had. Over the past few days, the two have “debated” each other over issues such as how the United States should deal with threats such as Iran.

Yesterday in Oregon, Obama said:

“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela—these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”

In Obama’s backyard, Chicago, today, McCain, reacted:

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess. … The threat the government of Iran poses is anything but tiny.”

Then later today in Montana, Obama came back with:

“Let me be absolutely clear: Iran is a grave threat. [But] the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn’t have one.”

Your turn, Sen. McCain. …

His parents were Christian, he was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, his wife’s parents were persecuted for their faith, and former President Ronald Reagan suspected he was a “closet believer,” but during the years he led the officially atheistic Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev insisted he held only a pantheistic view that “nature” was his god. This week in Italy, however, the last leader of the Soviet Communist regime publicly acknowledged that he is, in fact, a Christian. Gorbachev’s beliefs were revealed when he, along with his daughter Irina, was visiting the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi, where he kneeled and prayed silently for half an hour. “It was through St. Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb,” the 77-year-old Gorbachev told the Telegraph of London. “I feel very emotional to be here at such an important place not only for the Catholic faith, but for all humanity.”

HT: SteveG