Crossposted from Flopping Aces

While traveling most of the day yesterday I heard all about Obama’s Iraq speech but couldn’t find the time to blog on it. The WaPo did such an excellent job of dissecting this speech not much reason to put together a long post on it….they hit the nail on the head:

BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.

Mr. Obama’s charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama’s timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government. The real difference between the various plans is not the dates but the conditions: Both the Iraqis and Mr. McCain say the withdrawal would be linked to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops, as they have begun to do. Mr. Obama’s strategy allows no such linkage — his logic is that a timetable unilaterally dictated from Washington is necessary to force Iraqis to take responsibility for the country.

At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued — wrongly, as it turned out — that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war. He conceded that a withdrawal might be accompanied by a “spike” in violence. Now, he describes as “an achievable goal” that “we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future — a government that prevents sectarian conflict and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge.” How will that “true success” be achieved? By the same pullout that Mr. Obama proposed when chaos in Iraq appeared to him inevitable.

~~~

“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome — that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and a historical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.

Willful ignorance. No other way to describe his position on Iraq. How else do you explain the fact that he puts out his latest position on Iraq prior to visiting Iraq to see the conditions himself? There is no reason to see the progress, he knows and understands the only way to victory is to retreat. It’s bred into the liberal psyche I suppose. And now we see why the man won’t meet with the military leaders in Iraq. Can you imagine the reception he would get if he argued we could finally win this war by retreating? At the same time we ARE winning this war….

But this speech and his non-flip-flopping stance on Iraq should not come as any surprise. He received quite a bit of backlash from the far left over his flip-flopping on FISA so he had to stick to his guns here or face a mutiny.

ALSO:

Obama website removes Surge opinion “smoking gun”

The following is a post link that came via a commenter named “X” on the “Bush and GOP pushing harder on energy” thread. To disclose, the source is a Yahoo News story dated July 15th by an AP journalist, NEDRA PICKLER… titled “Obama Web site removes `surge’ from Iraq problem”.

It appears His Messiahship is busy removing website statements and proof that his prior stance INRE the Surge seriously conflicts with his latest and greatest policy statements INRE the surge. And when the AP jumps on this, you have to figure it’s an overt change in text…

Wonder if the Obama camp has any “bellyaches” … being so busy ingesting the cyber bread crumbs in order to obsure the trail to his past opinions and misjudgment.

Thank you “x”. You should speak out louder on your own behalf.. but you were “heard”.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s aides have removed criticism of President Bush’s increase of troops to Iraq from the campaign Web site, part of an effort to update the Democrat’s written war plan to reflect changing conditions.

Debate over the impact of President Bush’s troop “surge” has been at the center of exchanges this week between Obama and Republican presidential rival John McCain. Obama opposed the war and the surge from the start, while McCain supported both the invasion and the troop increase.

RTFA at the link above…

… and thank you for the heads up on the BHO website change.

UPDATE: Per Thomas’ suggest (post #1), here is a more permanent CBS link to the same article. Some article excerpts:

As first reported Tuesday by the New York Daily News, Obama’s campaign removed a reference to the surge as part of “The Problem” section on the part of his Web site devoted to laying out his plan for Iraq.

The change was part of many broader changes that Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said were made to reflect current conditions. She provided the full text of the old site and the updated version, which includes a new section on the recent resurgence of al-Qaida in Afghanistan and another on this year’s negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement that would detail the legal basis for the ongoing presence of U.S. military forces operating in Iraq.

The changes stress that Obama’s plan to end the war is responsible and designed to improve national security. They include:

_ An updated Obama quote at the top of the page. The previous quote stressed how Obama had the judgment to oppose the “rash war” from the start. This was a popular message among Democratic voters and was meant to draw distinctions with primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, who initially supported the war. The new quote focuses on how ending the war will make Americans safer _ a message aimed at general election voters who are more likely to trust McCain on issues of national security, according to polling.

_ A description of Obama’s plan as “a responsible, phased withdrawal” that will be directed by military commanders and done in consultation with the Iraqis. Previously, the site had a sentence that has since been removed that flatly said, “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq.” Morigi said that his plan hasn’t changed, but they wanted to expand the description. “There’s not an intent to shift language,” she said.

_ A new sentence that says Obama “would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppres potential genocidal violence within Iraq.”

Only one of his plan’s subheads remains unchanged, the first one _ “Judgment You Can Trust.” That’s a message the campaign wants Americans to embrace.

Wants me to “embrace”? Only in his dreams… which come, of course, at the “expense” of mine. LOL