Crossposted from Flopping Aces

It seems Iraqi leaders DO NOT endorse Obama’s plan after all!

In Wednesday’s Washington Post it was a threefer slam on Obama’s plan for withdrawal from Iraq. First, Dan Balz informs readers that Obama’s plan for withdrawal was opposed by General Petraeus in their meetings. After years of Democrats insisting we must “listen to the generals” it seems Obama may not have been so eager to hear what Petraeus had to say.

But it gets better than that. For readers who make it all the way to the editorial page (unfortunately, this leaves out most of Obama’s voters) it’s a double slam. Starting with the editorial which repeats the Petraeus concerns and goes further:

Mr. Obama in Iraq
Did he really find support for his withdrawal plan?
Washington Post
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; Page A14

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama’s visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama’s own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq’s principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a history of tailoring his public statements for political purposes, made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that Mr. Maliki’s timetable would extend at least seven months beyond Mr. Obama’s. More significant, it would be “a timetable which Iraqis set” — not the Washington-imposed schedule that Mr. Obama has in mind. It would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks. As Mr. Obama put it, Mr. Maliki “wants some flexibility in terms of how that’s carried out.”

Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq’s rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.

Obama stated in Iraq that the 16 month withdrawal timeline, which is sacrosanct to his core followers, might indeed be adjusted…. once the election is over and Obama wins.

The Post editorial continues

[Obama] denied being “so rigid and stubborn that I ignore anything that happens during the course of the 16 months,” though this would be more reassuring if Mr. Obama were not rigidly and stubbornly maintaining his opposition to the successful “surge” of the past 16 months. He also pointed out that he had “deliberately avoided providing a particular number” for the residual force of Americans he says would be left behind.

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

And to complete the Post’s triple Obama whack, Max Boot, from the Council on Foreign Relations and a foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s campaign adds this:

Behind Maliki’s Games
By Max Boot
Washington Post
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; Page A15

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama.

A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he’s saying — whatever that is.
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Keep in mind also that Maliki has no military experience and that he has been trapped in the Green Zone, relatively isolated from day-to-day life. For these reasons, he has been a consistent font of misguided predictions about how quickly U.S. forces could leave.

In May 2006, shortly after becoming prime minister, he claimed, “Our forces are capable of taking over the security in all Iraqi provinces within a year and a half.”

In October 2006, when violence was spinning out of control, Maliki declared that it would be “only a matter of months” before his security forces could “take over the security portfolio entirely and keep some multinational forces only in a supporting role.”

President Bush wisely ignored Maliki. Instead of withdrawing U.S. troops, he sent more. The prime minister wasn’t happy. On Dec. 15, 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has flatly told Gen. George Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, that he doesn’t want more U.S. personnel deployed to the country, according to U.S. military officials.” When the surge went ahead anyway, Maliki gave it an endorsement described in news accounts as “lukewarm.”

In January 2007, with the surge just starting, Maliki predicted “that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down.” In April 2007, when most of Baghdad was still out of control, the prime minister said that Iraqi forces would assume control of security in every province by the end of the year.
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But Maliki’s public utterances do not provide a reliable guide as to when it will be safe to pull out U.S. troops. Better to listen to the military professionals. The Post recently quoted Brig. Gen. Bilal al-Dayni, commander of Iraqi troops in Basra, as saying of the Americans, “We hope they will stay until 2020.” That is similar to the expectation of Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Qadir, who says his forces cannot assume full responsibility for internal security until 2012 and for external security until 2018.

What would happen if we were to pull out much faster, on a 16-month timetable? Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, says that would be “very dangerous” — the same words used by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Of course, if the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we will have to leave. But, the prime minister’s ambiguous comments notwithstanding, the Iraqi government is saying no such thing, because most Iraqis realize that the gains of the surge are fragile and could be undone by a too-rapid departure of U.S. forces.

Yes, isn’t it funny that after years of referring to Maliki as Bush’s “puppet” the left all of a sudden embraces him when they falsely think he has endorsed Obama’s plan for defeat withdrawal in Iraq?

It reminds me of what happened when military units were training for Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. While U.S. Air Force jets did a rehearsal flyover, one new Clinton aide complained that the military was trying to horn in on their celebration. Another aide corrected her saying “those are OUR jets now.”

Well, Obama hasn’t been elected and Maliki isn’t their puppet! Ever heard of the saying: Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched?

also:

How About a Fairness Doctrine for the Mainstream Media?

Could they be any more in the tank for Obama?

Considering how much noise Democrats have made about reviving the Fairness Doctrine to reign in conservative talk radio you would think that what used to be called the “mainstream” “news” media would be extra careful to fairly present the views of both candidates as we approach the fall election for President of the United States.

On Monday, we learned that the NY Times had refused to print an op-ed submitted by John McCain after publishing an op-ed from Barack Obama on July 14th. The rejection of McCain’s submission was yet another in a growing list of examples of traditional “news” media showing bias and taking sides.

When we learned that the three anchors of evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC were going to accompany Obama on his overseas trip, something they have yet to do with President Bush, we began to discover just how deep the media’s love affair with Obama really was.

The Project for Journalism Excellence, as well as the Tyndall Report have documented the sheer volume of news stories that feature Obama.

The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Newsweek Covers featuring Barack the Transcendant

Voter’s Catching On to “News” Media Favoritism

The Pew Poll for June 5, 2008 broke the not so surprising news that the public thought the “news” media favored Obama heavily throughout the primary campaign when his candidacy was something new. But as the Project for Excellence in Journalism demonstrates in the chart below, the media’s fascination with Obama hasn’t waned now that he is the presumptive Democrat nominee.

The latest Rasmussen Poll also finds that the public’s awareness of the bias in favor of Obama is growing:

Belief Growing That Reporters are Trying to Help Obama Win
Rasmussen
Monday, July 21, 2008

The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the New York Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
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In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters.
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A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.

So not only are voters clued into the favorable bias for Obama, they have also figured out that the media have been reporting that both the economy and the Iraq war are worse than they actually are (which tends to help Obama).

Unfortunately, as the Pew June 5 survey shows, even though readers and viewers of traditional media are declining, they still dominate the vast majority of news coverage that reaches most Americans.

However, with declining viewership and readership of the old media comes an opportunity for voters to get a better sampling of information from new media on the internet. And that’s why we’re here. It may not be equal time, but is sure is better than no time at all!