Obama: Surge Succeeded But Too Costly

Good job, Bill O’Reilly, but you should have held Obama’s feet a bit closer to the fire.
Actually, you caught him admitting he was wrong about the surge, and you should have made him grovel, crawl, and call out to Old Joe Biden for help.
Or, better yet, why didn’t you ask the great Obama to kick in some of the $10 million that his campaign raised in fear of Sarah Palin?
At least, Bill, you were able to get Obama to admit that the surge did work (when he and the Dems said it would not) beyond his wildest dreams.
Now, one must wonder what the Obama “wildest dreams” are all about.

“in ways that nobody anticipated”
Obama lying again. McCain anticipated it.

This is the same thing that Senator Obama has always said. He didn’t flip….I think that you a##hats need to just sign up and run right over to Iraq and give them folks what for….I have some ebay body armor you can borrow.

A couple months ago, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, McCain said that knowing what we know now he would still attack Iraq. Why does the media focus on Obama’s statements, especially since they listen to what he has said?
In April 2008, the Iraq surplus was discussed with General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) “I’d like to focus a minute on the financial sacrifice of our country. It is a burr in the saddle of the American people that the Iraqi government has a budget surplus and we have a massive budget deficit, and yet we are paying and they are not.”
McCain gave a campaign speech and said more money needed to be spent on training for the Iraq military.
Obama’s efforts to point to other factors that predated the “surge” – such as the Anbar Awakening (the Sunni tribal rejection of al-Qaeda extremists) and cease-fires ordered by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – fall on deaf ears.

Obama’s compaign is too costly. Look at what he spent on Pensylvania against Hillary. That’s not responsible spending. He’s all talk.

oh would you all just stop it!
Listen to what he is saying…the surge still did not yield the intended results. The surge was initiated to give the Iraqi’s room, the room without all the violence, to install their political resolutions, which they STILL HAVE NOT DONE.
Ok, that’s it on the surge.
Palin is not qualified to be vice president of this country. She really isn’t qualified to be governor. I bet the folks in Alaska are quietly trying to figure out how that happened. Her education level is sorely lacking.
With the degree she has, she’s not even qualified to teach a class, let alone be the vice president of this country.

McCain-Palin -USA
Obama-Biden liberal kooks

be clear he said he was not conceding that he was wrong because he’s not…Iraq is not stable by any stretch of the imagination…
other wise why would we be ignoring the countries wherer the terrorists are all in the name of trying to keep a cap on the bottle.

geevil
the surge workes because al qaeda can’t risk looking like they are to blame for the unrest in the middle east over the USA and we gave money and guns to militant muslim insurgents to fight with us…a tactic that has bitten us in the a$$ when we did the same thing in afghanistan…out of it we got OBL, al qaeda and the taliban.
that is why Obama is right…the goal of the surge was political stability…we do not have it…and the American economy can’t afford the decades it would take to create it if the Iraqii government won’t do it on it’s own.

Of course its too costly. That goes for the war too. We borrowed the money from China through the feds manipulation. Then there is the fact that troops are killing themselves. Then there is the cost of all the wounded. Obama will win, and he better do a good job. Ron Paul would have been a better choice.

Let’s boil this down real simple: Obama was right about the war as a whole (even O’Reilly admitted it), but was wrong about the surge (if we ignore the minor issue of political progress for the moment). McCain was wrong about the war, but right about the surge (again, looking only at part of the equation).
Who did better?
The surge is like the extra-credit part of a test. If you studied and do well on a test, you don’t need the extra credit. If you didn’t prepare for the test, your only hope of passing is getting a few extra credit points.
Which approach is better?

Posted by: Jim in OH | Sep 4, 2008 11:46:25 PM
How costly would it be if we DIDN’T fight terror? Anybody want to venture a guess what the human and economic tolls would be from a multi-city dirty nuke strike? Hint: It’s way, WAY more than what we’re spending on our two conflicts now.
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Hey Jimbo from OH-HIGH-OH
Could you explain how the war in Iraq has reduced the risk of “a multi-city dirty nuke strike” even a little?
Whatever Bush has done to prevent “a multi-city dirty nuke strike”, invading Iraq was NOT one of them.
Here’s the only substantial effect the invasion of Iraq has had on the “War Against Terror”.
By invading Iraq, Bush took a state thath had no WMDs and was not a haven to terrorism, and created a country the has been a breeding ground and very effective recruiting tool for terrorists.
As to WMDs. Iraq never had ‘em. But because of the invasion, Iran is now much closer to developing a Nuclear Bomb.
Hmmm…of course McCain supported Bush all of this. Its almost as if he perversely wanted to ENCOURAGE the growth of terrorism.
=======================================
BTW, I caught your post from earlier. I’ll post my response next here, to spare you having to find it.

Didn’t 9/11 happen when Bush was president?
Didn’t 9/10 occur a month after the August briefing memo about bin Laden wanting to “bring the fighting to America”?
Didn’t Richard Clark send Condeleeza Rice a detailed memo in January 2001, in which he stated “we would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses”?
Boo! Vote McCain.

m@cchiavelli,
What the heck are you talking about? Reread my post. I said, “How costly would it be if we DIDN’T fight terror?” I didn’t say “fight terror in Iraq.” I was speaking in the general sense. You’re too quick to jump to your catalog of liberal talking points. Do you have one original thought in your head?

McCain admitted that Bush failed the last 8 years and he is trying to convince people that he will be the one to change it, for someone who voted with Bush 90 percent of time, it’s very hard to believe.

reaganfan,
I’d sure like to know what was in those documents Sandy Berger stole and destroyed.

Jim in OH–It’s very telling when Hamas and other terrorists groups are endorsing Obama. They know he is an appeaser. If Obama somehow gets in, get ready to wear burkas ladies and read up on the Qaran.

m@cchiavelli,
I have some questions for you (not related to Iraq).
- Should we have assisted Kuwait when Saddam invaded that country?
- What actions should we have taken after 9/11?
- Should have we invaded Afghanistan?
- How should we have handled Saddam’s constant and flagrant violations of multiple UN resolutions?
- If we have an Obama administration, how should he answer future homeland terrorist attacks (say, if they originate from Iran, China, or even Russia)?
- Should we assist militarily in areas like Darfur that suffer from genocide at the hands of Islamic radicals?
- Say we arrest a terrorist cell in California and discover a nuclear device is about to go off in 30 minutes in, say, San Francisco (500,000 people will surely die) and in another major city we don’t know. One of the terrorists knows how to disable the devices in both locations. How should we get that information from him? Or should we even bother?
I’m interested in your thoughts. I won’t criticize you. I’m just curious about how you approach problems.

No one in their right mind would vote for someone like Obama that bases his experience as CEO in running a campaign he started last 18 months ago… Fact is 18 months ago Palin and McCain have already gotten their experience previously in making changes and making decisions being the true agent of change while this smooth talker lyer I mean lawyer starts his campaign to do what? To get experience in management? RIDICULOUS CLOWN. Obama the Clown thinks we Americans are fools!!! O=0 zerobama ZERO ZERO ZERO!!! zero experience means zero votes. This will be a land slide a McCain Palin win.

Obama fans are so hillarious. He says right in the interview that the surge worked. It worked better than in anyone’s wildest dreams. And yet there are still Obama supporters on here spinning it to mean that Obama was saying:
“Listen to what he is saying…the surge still did not yield the intended results.”
Seriously, do you guys even know what your candidate’s position is? His words are IN THE ARTICLE and crystal clear and you still aren’t able to accept it. I guess that’s what they mean when they say Obama supporters have no clue what his positions are and pretend like he’s saying what they want to hear.

Here is a thought-provoking matter to ponder over about Gov Palin. In Alaska there is a Statutory Rape law on the books that says that if an 18yr old has sex with a 17yr old it is a felony, and this law is implicit. Though I personally don’t agree with teens having sex because of what can possibly happen, as in the case with Gov Palin’s daughter. However, my argument is not whether an 18yr old should be arrested for having sex with a 17yr old, which I am not all that crazy about, but the law is the law. It can also be argued that Gov Palin has been an irresponsible parent for allowing it to happen, by not taking a stronger stand in educating her daughter about what can happen if she makes the choice to date and have sex, not to mention his age. This has more to do with Gov Palin being an irresponsible elected official, for not upholding the laws that she took an oath to uphold. Gov Palin along with others are treating this only as a personal matter, while totally disregarding its legal implication. I know this has caused personal embarrassment for Gov Palin, and I can sympathize with her for the embarrassment it has caused. Yet Irrespective of your differences with my opinion on this matter, I am sure we can all agree that we need someone in the Whitehouse that would implement the laws that they are entrusted to uphold. Because when we take a closer look at this matter, without any doubt there is a double standard being applied in this case, while many youngsters around the Country are serving jail time for commenting this same offense? After all, isn’t the Republican the ones that are always saying building more prisons, is what this Country needs? How can we allow Gov Palin to govern America, with this type of mentality? I HOPE THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE MEANS WHEN SHE SAYS THAT SHE IS A MAVERICK!

What Barack Obama learned from the Communist Party
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html
Inside Obama’s Acorn
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=
READ and LEARN about your “media-vetted” Messiah. See the networks doing much talking about these details? Are the anti-American influences and radical associations of a potential U.S. President less important than Palin’s private family matters? Has everyone gone insane?

Now the game begins. Let’s see how BPO (P stands for Present, real middle name cannot be used, of course) stands up to the viscious, slimy smear machine of the GOP. Hillary had to hold back from slinging the real mud for obvious reasons, namely she’s a Democrat and couldn’t completely blow up one of her own party members. McCain will have no such reservations. Sure, last night he said “we’re all Americans so let’s play nice” but that was just throwing a bone to the independents out there.
Deep down inside McCain knows just how very different he and Obama are and McCain will use everything in his arsenal to expose BPO’s idealogical roots. He must have used the word “fight” about 50 times in his speech. Buckle up, folks. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

This man will say and will do anything to pander some votes. Such an integrity! Such a desparated motive! This is one time we need to judge the book by its cover.

This will absolutely blow your mind. One more reason why you never hear the details of Obama’s “community organizing” activities in the mainstream media. People, we are being duped on an unimaginable level.
Michelle’s Boot Camps For Radicals
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=305420655186700

Documents released Tuesday by the University of Illinois at Chicago shed some light on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a founding member of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground.
Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical.
Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts in Chicago, he doesn’t share Ayers’ extreme views.
The massive collection of newly released documents — 140 boxes full of them — includes agendas that clearly put Obama and Ayers in the same room for meetings of Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational initiative that Ayers was instrumental in starting and that Obama chaired in the 1990s.

“Obama is offering a very different presidency”
Yes one of lies.
Obama is a liar. I will post information that hopfully will lead others to seek the truth. whether these stories are biased or not at least you can seek the answers for yourself.
My cousin worked for Maytag. Obama did nothing for them. What followed was a story that was ignored by the media after Obama claimed to have helped the Maytag workers in a stump speech.
Despite Obama’s claims of deep concern for Galesburg’s proletarian victims, however, Maytag union members told Secter that Obama had done remarkably little to save the Galesburg workers’ jobs. Those workers belonged to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose president noted that “Obama’s support for Maytag workers was more show than substance.”
“Maytag union members said Obama had done remarkably little to save the Galesburg workers’ jobs.”
Maytag employees and former employees were particularly rankled by Obama’s inaction because he possessed a special relationship with a leading Maytag decision-maker. Between 2003 and 2008, Obama received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the family of Lester Crown, one of Maytag’s directors and largest investors. The Crowns and employees of their family-managed holding company (Henry Crown Investments) gave at least $195,000 to Obama’s senate and presidential campaigns between 2003 and 2008. According to Crown, however, Obama never once raised the fate of Maytag’s Galesburg workers with him.

“I am a Hillary supported that after hearing the Palin/McCain speeches will be now voting for blah blah blah blah blah…”
Like that’s going to fool anyone but yourselves.
These pathetic Republican “pseudo Hillary people” think they can stand and post everywhere, in front of real Hillary supporters, and pretend their shallow logic has now made them McCain/Palin supporters.
You fools don’t even come close to getting it. You people are such obvious victims of the sexist nature of your political party’s policies on women that you think we support Hillary because of her tits and shinny white smile.
We support Hillary not only because she is a woman with highly capable intellect, experience and abilities, but because SHE HAS BALLS!!!
Posted by: Dom | Sep 5, 2008 11:47:08 AM
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LOLOL, Don’t forget the phony African-Americans voting for the bloated white presidential ticket, LOLOL!
Poor McCainites, they are resorting to the most pathetic tactics…
The joy I feel the most is that they will now suffer for 8 years+!!!!
RIP Republican Party!

m@cchiavelli,
What the heck are you talking about? Reread my post. I said, “How costly would it be if we DIDN’T fight terror?” I didn’t say “fight terror in Iraq.”
========================================
Hi Jim –
You asked how costly it would be if we didn’t fight “terror”. It seemed to me that since the discussion was about costs, and President Bush has claimed that the invasion of Iraq was necessary in his “fight on terror”, we couldn’t discuss costs without discussing the cost of the war in Iraq, or questioning whether the war in Iraq really has anything to do with the fight on terror at all.
You may not have mentioned Iraq, but Bush has — repeatedly. If you don’t mean to include Iraq in the “fight on terror” then calculating the cost of a “real fight on terror” becomes easy. Subtract the cost of the “WAR in Iraq” (hundreds of billions of dollars) from the total cost of our current fight on terror, what remains is the cost of a real war on terror, not Pres. Bush’s phony war in Iraq.

Posted by: Jim in OH | Sep 5, 2008 2:23:40 AM
m@cchiavelli,
I have some questions for you (not related to Iraq).
==========================================
Something just occurred to me:
Funny how Pres. Bush took us INTO war because he set an artificial deadline.
(He didn’t have to set that particular deadline for compliance, he could have given weapons inspectors more time, the international community more time, the American military more time to build up its forces and plan for the inevitable messy aftermath, which we are all now suffering.)
I wasn’t against invading Iraq, I was against the TIMING and MANNER of our invasion of Iraq.
There was NO urgency about getting Saddam to comply by the specific date that Bush set. But once he set it, he had to do in or lose face.
Bush jumped the gun without doing his OWN homework. The unprepared C student becomes the unprepared C President. The boy becomes the man.
But NOW he wants to get an extension on taking the final exam, now he wants more time to do his homework, now he refuses to set what he calls an “artificial deadline to withdraw”.
The point about DEADLINES is that they force people to do their homework, prepare for something, comply with some order, or step up to the plate and answer for their actions.
Curious….
The point about setting a SECOND DEADLINE – the date we withdraw (redeploy in p.c. speak) – is to force the current Iraqi administration to prepare, put its house in order, step up to the plate, and take responsibility.
We don’t have to set an artificially premature deadline to withdraw from Iraq, but we MUST set some kind of deadline, otherwise the current Iraqi government will continue to play us for fools – using our military forces – the forces Bush/McCain pretend to honor – to police their streets, resolve their infighting, take on their gangs, build their infrastructure, protect their generating facilities, guard their prisons, provide their security, etc.
As long as they know we’ll always be there, the Iraqi government will be happy to let our forces do all the heavy lifting – and then we might very well be in Iraq for 100 years, even 1000 years.

Addressing the original point; while I don’t think Obama should have used the phraseology “beyond our wildest dreams”, it is clear that he qualified the remarks with the following:
OBAMA: Because there is an underlying problem with what we have done. We have reduced the violence. But the Iraqis have still not taken responsibility. And we still do not have the kind of political reconciliation — we are still spending, Bill, $10 billion or $12 billion a month

Do we really want to get into corruption and special interest, with what we know about McCain and the Keating Five?

Please, you Obammmabots try to get some help.
Iraq. Saddam would not let the Inspectors go where they wanted because he had, uh, 50,000 tons of YELLOWCAKE. Inspectors couldn’t find their butts with both hands. How about the Fighter Planes found buried in the dessert by our troops?
Sure, we won the war in a few months but democrats and the liberal press didn’t want us to win. They got those college prank pictures of prisoners with panties on their heads, and made a federal case out of it. From then on, our guys couldn’t hurt a fly over there. Thanks, democrats.
After that they had to turn dangerous prisoners loose and they just went home and put on pajamas and planted bombs.
Got it now, Bots?
Palin/McCain 08

Regarding the surge: Obama agrees that it appears to have been effective (though we won’t really know until Iraq’s national elections in 2010). Question, however — is it better policy-making to be right about the surge or about going into Iraq in the first place? We’ve currently committed about $800 billion in federal funds, a large portion of which we’ve had to borrow from foreign sources (China), to fund the effort in Iraq. Using debt funding for the war further increases the cost of the war and undermines the U.S. economically, not to mention making us beholden to foreign rivals (China). Meanwhile, when we count the costs of the war we forget to mention how many Iraqi civilians have died as a result (the people we purportedly went in to protect and liberate) — but you can bet most of the rest of the world hasn’t. Estimates vary substantially, but run as high as 500,000 innocent casualties (Lancet). Then there are the economic, psychological, and emotional costs to our soldiers and their families, which we are only beginning to realize and which have not yet been properly addressed or aided.
Opportunity costs: And, because our resources have been so tied up with Iraq, we have substantially reduced our efforts to address issues like the large amount of unsecured nuclear materials throughout Russia and other former Soviet-bloc states (GW Bush’s first term cut funding for this issue). And we have not meaningfully addressed more pressing national security threats like Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Iran, not to mention North Korea, etc. Then there are the domestic issues that have been neglected and deprioritized – the mortgage/massive foreclosure crisis, rise in unemployment, gas/energy price increases, devastating natural disasters, and cronyism (example: placing individuals like Mike Brown (Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association) in charge of FEMA (he was in charge during the Hurricane Katrina debacle), etc).
National security: The net effect of the last 8 years is that the true, more immediate enemies of our country have grown in numbers and our ability to defeat them has been diluted – and, we have lost international clout and credibility (which means political power). Our responses to external terrorism have substantially exacerbated the situation to the detriment of our morale and national security – militarily, economically, and politically. We need to refocus and go after the real enemies of our country abroad and work on the real problems of our country at home. How can we be so far in debt after the richest period in American history? Is that really good for our military and economic national security?
Due process: The genius of the American system is that it has 3 branches (judicial, legislative and executive) and that power is shared between all three. One of the basic safeguards of the system is that each branch normally acts as a check and balance on the others. However, the Republican-led Congress that was in place with G.W. Bush (one in which McCain was a significant leader) failed to do just that. To that end we now have soaring deficits, executive orders issued by the President that gut laws ratified and respected by generations of judges, senators, and congressmen (for example, the proscription against torture  see Executive Order signed July 20, 2007), and a justice system that is stacked with individuals who were appointed because of personal ideologies (see Monica Goodling scandal) instead of legal objectivity and competence. As another example, see the controversial firing of U.S. Attorneys (examples are David Iglesias and John McKay) across the country (the chief federal prosecutors who make life-or-death decisions everyday to keep us safe from some of the worst criminals) — many of whom were appointed by Republican Presidents — for failing to forward the administration’s political agenda in violation of law.
Presidencies are administrations, not just one person: Don’t get me wrong – John McCain is an amazing patriot. And he was a maverick for much his career. But, as his presidential nomination has approached in recent years, he has toed the party line. Pragmatism, to further his presidential bid? Perhaps. On a personal level, he is clearly a man of integrity, but on a professional/political level, he is a survivor. Selling out to join the party line to win an election does not show much political integrity and was not the act of an elder, wiser statesman. And right now we desperately need wise statesmen. Obama is one of those.
21st Century Leadership: We need leadership that is not subject to the changing winds of an election year and we need a real discussion about difficult issues from a leader who is willing to learn what the 21st Century is about (e.g., understanding the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites when discussing Middle East war policy with heads of Middle Eastern countries, and basic things like knowing how a computer is used when discussing economic/technology policy with U.S. high tech business leaders). As Lincoln so aptly demonstrated, the job of President is about judgment. McCain’s judgment has failed him in recent years and we cannot risk four more years on the same path. $800 BILLION in debt, the longest war in American history, and all those American soldiers loves (not to mention all their families) … and we still have not crushed Al Qaeda, both militarily AND philosophically? (“Oh, we invaded the wrong country.”).
“Choose wisely”: And these are not a Red vs. Blue, hawk vs. dove, elitist vs. small town issues. I’m the proud granddaughter of a WW II Congressional Medal of Honor nominee. I’m in a mixed marriage as my spouse is a card-carrying Republican. I have worked for multinational corporations and now am privileged to be able to stay home to raise my small children. I found my way from a small, heartland town to Harvard Law School, and I love the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land. A decision about who will best serve the interests of the people of the United States in the future can’t be made based on a “gut feeling” without spending the time to really study the past and the current issues. We all have an important choice to make and, whether or not we agree or disagree on the underlying issues, let’s choose our next President based on facts – not on a few pithy catch phrases or unsubstantiated internet rumors.

Posted by: LarryMan | Sep 5, 2008 2:27:47 PM
“Inspectors couldn’t find their butts with both hands.”
========================================
Tell that to President Bush, he relied on Hans Blix, and his final report to conlude that — after all — Saddam did NOT have WMDs.
Plus: Bush was entirely satisfied to rely on the inspectors when it served his end. HE did not say we needed to go to war because the inspectors weren’t doing their job.
I’m curious “Larry Boy”, why do you think we went to war in Iraq? The nation wants to know, since Bush never could make up his mind, and tell us.
What’s your final answer?

————————————–
Machiavelli, try and learn some facts, I know it’s hard, but try.
Just a few months ago, while you were on High School Summer Vacation, 50 TONS of Yellowcake from Iraq were shipped to Canada. DUH!!!!!
We went into Iraq because EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, every democrat including Bill Clinton, Hitlery Clinton, John Kerry, AND Al Gore said Saddam had WMD’s. We went after overwelming approval from Congress, the Senate, AND the UN. We went after Saddam was turning Radar on our fighter planes. We went when the world said Saddam was torturing women and children. AND, since he was trading oil for food and still starving his people, while building Gold Lined Palaces, he was just biding his time until Russia, China, and France could get his sanctions removed.
He was paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers who bombed Israel. One day when he had the missle capability, he was going to bomb Israel and then we would be involved in a huge war anyway.
Got it?
I didn’t think so.
Palin/McCain 08

Bush made a deal with Iran to stop the IED and suicide bomb attacks on US soldiers in Iraq. That’s why the surge worked. We agreed to not attack Iran, stop Israel from attacking Iran, and back away from any further sanctions on Iran. No surprise gas prices went down. Visit Debka.com.
Worse than that Bush encouraged Georgia to go after South Ossetia knowing Russia would go into Georgia, stop Israel from using airfields in Georgia to attack Iran, take attention away from the ultimatum given to Iran by the G-8 to stop their nuclear program, and set up McCain with a new Russian Cold War campaign issue.
The surge didn’t “work”; we paid off the Iranians, like the Republicans did for Reagan’s campaign to keep the American hostages till after the election, making President Carter look weak and ineffective.

MCCAIN = EXECUTIVE DECISION
OBAMA – “PRESENT”
PALIN = EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE
OBAMA = “NADA”

Is that why she became mayor of that
town? Because she won a beauty contest?
That how you become mayors of small towns in America?
C’mon, we knew that Bush was only a pretend Redneck–his family is Northeastern royalty. But this beauty contest winner is an authentic hick. If she does make it to the White House, all hell will break loose.
Its going to great for entertainment purposes of course. We’re going to have even more fun at her expense than we had with Bush, but come on….
BTW, to correct my earlier post–its not what happens when hockey mom is elected but what happens when hockey mom moves in.
Full confession–I’m a Hillary Clinton supporter. I didn’t really think Obama had the goods…but then McCain chose this beauty queen, and now I think, in comparison to her, BO is a very safe choice indeed. He might not have that much ‘executive experience’ but he graduated top of his class from Harvard Law, then worked as a Professor of Consitutional Law for 12 years. Hillary was his equal in the brains department but she surpassed him in toughness.
But this education-starved beauty queen–sure as hell doesn’t have the brains, and quite possibly doesn’t have the balls too.

LarryMan,
True, Hillary Clinton did get that wrong — it is one reason she isn’t on the Democratic ticket. What do you think about Palin’s representation that she is against earmarks when in fact she established a program for Wasilla (where she was mayor) to go after federal earmarks. What about the fact that while she killed the bridge to nowhere (after supporting it), she did happily accept the money — Alaska just used it for other projects. Most recently, as governor, she had a request in for $197 million in earmarks for Alaska (more, per citizen, than requested by any other state). She may be interested in reform, but I don’t think it has much to do with reforming the finance system.

For the Republicans, the best way to winning an argument, it seems, is to shift the goal post when your back is well and truly against the wall. Rather than account for leading your poor countrymen to an ill-judged, ill-timed, ill-planned war, all you need do is shout:’surge and succes’, without minding the cost in men and money. Rather than explain why a man who voted evry time for poor policies should be accepted as a change agent, abuse the young man who had showed better judgenent when the chorus men were following Mr Bush to war, making the whole world worse off prior to September 11, then simply call on a young lady to help you scream ‘change’!. And never fail to remember the power of abuse of your opponent, as if Americans are mere mendicants to be led by their noses. What manner of change is this that all it does is abuse its opponent for want of anything newer than the same, old, failed policies of ‘country first’ just very much like the Nazis of old? Certainly, American voters cannot be that gullible, or are they?

Here is a true and meaningful answer Senators Obama and Biden can use to counter John McCain and Sara Palin’s claim that surge was success: (1)Over 500 billion U.S. taxpayer’s dollars spent, and (2) after 5 years of our occupation of Iraq, (3) The Iraqi capitol’s governmental buildings, including the Iraqi Parliament are surrounded by concrete and fortifications. Members of the Iraqi Parliament and other citizen must be transported in and out in in armored military type convoy. (Imagine the US Congress operating for 5 plus years in the manner of the current Iraqi capitol-this is success???), (4) the opening of a centuries old Pandora’s box, releasing tribal and religious blood feuds with our mission to search and destroy Sadaam’s weapons of mass destruction (not found)changed to bring Jeffersonian democracy (it took the Western world centuries of religious wars after the inception of the Magna Carta to get to 1776) to Iraq as a paradigm for the Gulf and Mideast)changed to (5)creating a a stabilizing rapprochment among the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds and (6) The destruction and disruption of the Iraqi oil industry Success. What fantasy world due McCain, Palin et al live in? Oh yes, it is called ad hoc hypothesizing spurious rationales (over and over)in order to deny empirical “on the ground” reality. According to Albert Einstein, this solopsistic view or reality is the most logical in the sense of one’s ability to create a personal coherence theory that denies a relationship to the human experiential world. Theoretical physics is an example of this type of logic. Fortunately, theoretical physics doesn’t involve men women and children blown to bits, amputations, loss of loved ones, severe mental disorders, disruption and degradation of daily life and loss of homes and businesses. To quote the Venerable sage from Texas, Governor George W. Bush:
“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem.” — George W. Bush, Jan. 2001.

After 3 years and 3,000 lives
Both Obama and McCain opposed Bush’s plan for the surge back in January 2007. For one thing there was no David Patreaus in Iraq. At the time. He didn’t take over until late February
Bush proposed and extra 20,000 for 90 days. McCain bumped it to 25,000. Both were wrong. The surge took 35,000 troops, a full year, lots of money, and a thousand more U.S. casualities.
As Obama and McCain predicted played an important role in reducing violence. But other factors were important. Paying Iraqis not to kill Iraqis. Sadr’s truce,Al Qaeda killing to many Iraqis, and more Iraqis themselves wanting peace and justice.
Patreaus says Iraq is to dangerous to bring down troop levels. So did surge really work as much McCain would have you believe. The surge is over. But the danger for our troops and Iraqis is not over?

LarryMan,
One of the problems with the justification for going into Iraq was that there were plenty of dissenting voices on the evidence, even before we went in. Employees of both the CIA and the State Department have stated that there were problems with the evidence that Saddam had a WMD program and that they were told over and over again by high level officials (Cheney) that they had to revise their reports to remove qualifications, which they eventually did.
Even if you discount those reports, the weapons inspectors inside Iraq were clear that they had not found WMDs that had not previously been accounted for. Also, regarding the yellowcake you previously mentioned, that had been in Iraq since the 1980′s and had been accounted for by UN inspectors long before this conflict. That particular yellowcake also was not weapons grade, and could not become so without quite sophisticated processing that Iraq did not have the capability to handle.
Regarding Congressional approval of the Iraq conflict — there is some question of what Democrats in Congress actually thought they were authorizing Bush to do, but it is clear that Congress should have tightened up the language of the resolution if they wanted him more restricted than he was. That being said, it was a Republican Congress that gave this power to a Republican President.
A question for you Larry — do you think that our troops and our resources have been well cared for and managed by the current administration? I come from a community of 3,000 that has 18 kids over there now. The community has experienced suicides and other sorrows related to the young men and women serving over there. As our military personnel have come back, to top everything off, they’ve discovered that the Republican Congress has cut their benefits so that receiving proper health care is difficult and involves sorting through an inordinate amount of red tape.
Republicans, as the majority party in Congress (the funding arm of our government), have been in charge of caring for our men and women in uniform for 20 of the last 28 years — and look how they have performed. Insufficient body armor, substandard equipment (Humvees with little or no armor) and insufficient medical care. Meanwhile, KBR (one of the largest corporations providing services in Iraq and an excellent example of the privatization of fundamental government services) experiences hugely favorable tax rates (on a historical basis) even as it provides tainted water to soldiers in the field and builds a shower that electrocuted one Green Beret (Ryan Maseth) to death. War is hell, but it seems that the current adminstration, backed by Senator McCain, has made it even more hellacious for our military personnel.

McCain=Epic Fail