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PHOENIX — John McCain was forced to clarify his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He said he was talking about the first Persian Gulf War and not the current conflict.

At issue was a remark he made at a town hall-style meeting Friday morning in Denver.

"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee sought to clarify his comments later, after his campaign plane landed in Phoenix. He said he didn't mean the United States went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil.

"No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons," McCain told reporters.

One reason was Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he said. "But also we didn't want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it's more important than any other part of the world," he said.

"If the word 'again' was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean," McCain said.

"The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

McCain is a staunch supporter of the Iraq war.

His support for the war has drawn attacks from the Democratic Party, and on Friday, he defended himself against television ads that accuse him of advocating a 100-year war in Iraq.

The ads, run by the Democratic National Committee and the liberal group MoveOn.org., tie McCain to President Bush and cite McCain's comments that there could be an American military presence in Iraq for 100 years.

"One hundred years in Iraq? And you thought no one could be worse than George Bush," an announcer says in the most recent ad, run by MoveOn.org.

McCain brought up the commercials in Denver, saying they are lies. He doesn't deny saying "100 years" in connection with U.S. military operations in Iraq. But he said he was referring to a possible peacekeeping force.

"You have seen an ad campaign that is mounted against me that says I wanted to stay and fight in Iraq and fight for 100 years," McCain told about 300 people at the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center.

"My friends, it's a direct falsification, and I'm sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion," he said.