 Normally, presidential candidates are not offered Secret Service protection until early February of election year; this was the earliest protection had ever been granted.On August 1 when making his foreign policy speech Obama created controversy by declaring that the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, with or without the consent of the Pakistani government.He stated that if elected, "If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."