First, none of this is meant to defend Obama. While he’s saying pretty much what he said last year, his refusal to commit to a full withdrawal (something that was consistent throughout the primary) leaves him wide-open to charges that he’s embracing the defeatist stay-forever agenda. Since most of the MSM-ers and Washington Villagers want us to stay forever (since they prefer ensuring that the Iraq civil war continues forever to pulling out and allowing Iraq to form an actual government), I expect Obama will too, despite his attempts to pretend otherwise. (Basically he’s pretending he’ll pull out because that’s the popular position, whereas staying in Iraq is horribly unpopular. But he’ll sell out.)
violence is down to 2004 levels,
2005, actually. And 2005 levels of violence are enough to qualify Iraq as one of the worst places in the world (so are 2004 levels, for that matter, but the surge couldn’t even get us back to those levels).
no one is talking about a "civil war",
Of course it is a civil war. It’s merely at the levels of 2005, so conservatives can go back to denying that it’s a civil war, but what we have in Iraq is still armed factions killing each other, and the American occupation exacerbating the civil war (and, in some cases like Basra, helping the Iraqis kill each other after the Iraqi government’s initial civil war initiative failed).
, 15 of 18 benchmarks are satisfactory
Not according to anything except the Bush administration’s definition of "satisfactory." I understand that conservatives, with their worship of big government programs, believe the Bush administration when they say that the bloated, useless bureaucratic program known as the war in Iraq is going great. Normal people look at Iraq - civil war violence at 2005 levels, basic services still unavailable, foreign occupiers building walls around entire communities to keep the civil war violence from getting even worse - and see it as a failed government program. |
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Written By:
T.B.
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Obama and the "Iraq crawl" Is that anything like the "Electric Slide"?I understand that conservatives, with their worship of big government programs While I realize Bush isn’t the fiscal conservative nor "limited government" sort of guy Reagan was, don’t for a second confuse that with what you call "worship" of big government programs...
We are the ones who think socialized healthcare is a good idea. |
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Written By:
Scott Jacobs
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we aren’t***
At some point, I’ll actually start to take advangate of the preview feature... |
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Written By:
Scott Jacobs
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Sunnis have rejoined the Iraqi government Is the Iraqi government paying the Sons of Iraq’s salaries? |
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Written By:
Retief
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Is the Iraqi government paying the Sons of Iraq’s salaries?
According to Wiki they are funded thru US sources...does it make any difference, let’s be honest not to you, but in any real sense does it make any difference?Of course it is a civil war. And what if they gave a Civil War and no one showed up? JAM/Sunni’s and AQ all seem to be defeated. Who’s fighting this civil war? |
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Written By:
Joe
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Who’s fighting this civil war? People tha t Iran ships in!
Wait a minute... |
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Written By:
Scott Jacobs
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It wouldn’t matter on the Left if Iraq obviously turned into Switzerland tomorrow. It would still be a defeat, an ’unwinnable war’ and a quagmire.
We lost to both Germany and Japan, as evidenced by the fact that we’re still occupying them.
OTOH, it also wouldn’t matter to them if we removed all the troops and the next day the entire Middle East erupted into one gigantic ethnic war resulting in a hundred million deaths.
All that matters is that "Bush lied and people died" and the Iraq was/is/always be wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’d hate to be that miserable.
Oh, and Iraq is currently less violent than Venezuela and Zimbabwe. What do Leftists want to do about those two?
Oh. I forgot. Those two have good Lefties in charge of the carnage. |
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Written By:
jorgxmckie
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Regardless of what yo-mama says, he has a enabling press corps which happily spins, distorts, prevaricates, lies and provides free publicity for him.
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Written By:
tim stevens
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Almost as common as the statement, "That is not the (fill in the blank) I knew" is, "What I have always said is (fill in the blank, followed by something diameterically opposite to what he’s always said)." |
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Written By:
Diffus
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That’s not the "Obama Crawl."
That’s the Obama Slide-to-the-Right-Because-Obama’s-Left-Wing-Crappola-Won’t-Fly-in-This-Election Dance.
That’s why Obama is suddenly pro-death penalty (when he was always opposed to it), pro-guns (despite claiming in 1996 that he wanted to outlaw them), and suddenly realizes that "values" and "patriotism" are important despite sitting for 20 years and listening to the black David Duke and not being in the least upset by any of it.
That’s a crawl, all right. A crawl from the Nutsy Left where Obama truly is the center, despite all evidence that he is still a Left wing loon. |
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Written By:
James Marsden
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TB — The claim that "Violence in all of Iraq is the lowest since March 2004" is documented on p. 20 of Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq. A discussion of the different attempts to count Iraqi casualties, which includes Iraq Body Count though not iCasualties, can be found here.
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Written By:
huxley
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Frankly, this is the sort of stuff that killed John Kerry four years ago, you just couldn’t figure out exactly where he stood, on anything. Everybody knows that Obama is going to adapt to the current situation, but this stupid waffling doesn’t show "good judgement" but rather mere political calculation (i.e. the old politics) ... Changing dynamics in Iraq pose challenge for Obama
Senator Barack Obama said he might "refine" his Iraq policies after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But hours later he held a second news conference to emphasize his commitment to the withdrawing of all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
His two statements, made Thursday in Fargo, North Dakota, reflected how the changing dynamics in Iraq have posed a challenge for Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. He has been trying to retain flexibility as violence declines there without abandoning one of the central promises of his campaign: that if elected he would end the war. Talk about fearing the "netroots".
Some people don’t know how to take "good news."
For all the talk that Bush never changed his strategy .. at least when he went to General Petreaus for a "new strategy for Iraq", he changed. And it’s working.
This clown doesn’t even have to face the possibility of blood on his hands that would come with being POTUS, and he folds.
It’s easy to see through Obama .. no courage here. What a wuss.
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Written By:
Neo
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