McCain team uses technology to track Obama’s Web site

The staff of Republican presidential contender John McCain has begun stalking Barack Obama’s Web site, identifying changes the Democrat has made and suggesting some of the changes are signs of the senator’s shifting political positions.

While McCain has admitted in interviews he barely knows how to use the Internet, his team knows a few tricks. One tool the McCain team is using is a service called Versionista, developed by Peter Bray, a Portland consultant.

Versionista helped the McCain campaign publish a side-by-side comparison of Obama’s Iraq war policy Web pages. Versionista keeps hourly snapshots to track any changes.The McCain post of the Obama Web changes can be found at http://tinyurl.com/5n2z8q.

It shows halfway down the page that the Obama campaign changed its wording to change the spin about the value President Bush’s surge of troops sent to Iraq.

Obama’s July 11 version of the page says: “At great cost our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006.”

The July 14 version said: “Our troops have heroically helped reduce civilian casualties in Iraq to early 2006 levels. This is a testament to our military’s hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics, and enormous sacrifice by our troops and military families.”