Iraqi PM Maliki calls Obama's timetable "the right timeframeFollow

He's been calling for that sort of withdrawal time frame long before he announced his bid for the presidency, and definitely not purely in the context of a start time of Jan 09.

Do I have to pull out quotes or can we just acknowledge that this is true and move on?




Yes. Like the suckers who've been convinced that the Dems will wave magic pixie dust and make the Iraq conflict disappear...

the purpose of the surge was a response to an upswing in violence. We actually have more non-surge troops in Iraq now that the "surge" troops have departed than we had previously.

I'll consider us "winning" when we're actually coming home.

No, we won the European theater of WWII on V-E day. Curiously, the fall of Baghdad didn't have the same effect on the Iraq War, now did it?Well, I'm waiting on the official metric. Apparently it's a lot different than the ones we've used for every other war in our nation's -- hell, pretty much the world's -- history.

Perhaps McCain can provide one when he's done crying about Obama's Op-Ed.

By-the-by, I also think it would be valid criticism for it to be said that if the Bush administration is taking any credit for the surge, they should be ashamed for trumpeting a fix for what should not have been a problem in the first place.

Letting the military do it's job and allowing them to determine the proper forces needed inside the political constraints of a set time and physical boundries of the theater of conflict is what is the right thing to do. Telling them they have to conduct themselves with X amount of troops and X amount of money is a no-go and a non-starter. If you're gonna use the military, tell them what you want done and then let them do it-- their way. After all, they are the experts.

Totem

But anyone who's actually informed about what's going on has got to see this for the huge lie that it is.

Informed voters decided on Obama months ago. The entire GOP strategy for the last decade has been keeping voters as uninformed as possible.



Yeah gbaji. You were right about that surge. Last spring when you said it would stabilize the country, you were right.

It didn't. Big bags of cash stabilized the county. Unless by "stabilize" you meant "drove foreign fighters to Afghanistan and Pakistan where they killed Americans".

Iraq's more stable than it was before the surge. Afghanistan is falling apart, Pakistan is cashing our checks and handing the money to al Queda while laughing at us. If we stopped handing people who murdered our troops large sacks of gold, Iraq would destabilize in a week.

If the goal was to change where the dead American bodies came from, then yes, it was a success.

What a load of ********* The decision to send few troops was made by Rumsfeld alone. Are you actually trying to tell us that Rumsfeld was also bullied into using fewer troops than necessary because of the protests of groups like MoveOn.org??

You're so full of ****. You know, I can respect a guy like Totem, eventhough I disagree with him on lots of things. At least he shows a bit of moral integrity. At least he can admit failings and mistakes.

You can't. You have this psychosis of blaming everything on everyone else. You're like a spoilt 6 year old. How is anyone meant to take your **** seriously? How can anyone respect any of your opinions when it always boils down to "It's the Dem's fault"? For fUck's sake, the Republican controlled the Presidency, the Houses, and the SC. How much more control could they have had during the last 8 years? And even when they control all this, all the means of government, you're telling me that they're still bullied into listening to the Democrats?

Both you and your party need to grow some balls, and learn a little something called responsability for your actions.

Yep, a bit like a 6 year old.

You white men and your burdens.

On the plus side, I still bother making a post just to insult gbaji, whereas I can't even be ***** with Varrus. It's just so ridiculous.

Everything is relative, I guess.

Yes, the famous US Communist party and its famous lines, that's exactly what I follow

Is there even a Communist party in the US? Didn't they all get purged under McCarthy?

I just find it incredibly amusing the degree to which troop levels in Iraq is a major political position of Liberals and the Dem party, yet you all insist that there was no political pressure to fight in Iraq with the minimum number of troops coming from the Left.

It's like you guys don't even know what you're saying. The phrase "mission accomplished" was entirely about troop levels in Iraq not going down immediately after Baghdad surrendered and was a rallying cry of the Dean campaign. But that had didn't put any pressure on the Bush administration to avoid increasing troops in 2004, when it became apparent that we'd need them?

You all oppposed the surge. Why? Because it would increase troop levels in Iraq. Why? Because you've equated removing troops as "good", and increasing or just keeping them there as "bad". Heck. Joph insists on measuring success by troop levels, with withdrawal apparently meaning success.

You all do this. You all argue these positions. But when I suggest that this very argument created the political pressure that prevented the Bush administration from putting more troops in Iraq early on (and from adding them after the first 6 months or so), you all deny it. Insane! It's amazing that you're entire political methodology relies around using such arguments to apply political pressure, but you refuse to acknowledge that it does exactly that? How do you rectify this? If you don't think it works, why hold the positions you hold? Why support a guy like Obama who's been calling for withdrawal of troops for years?


If we're now recognizing that the mistake in Iraq was that we didn't send enough troops initially and failed to send more when things failed to just immediately work out, isn't it kinda important to also also recognize which "side" of our political landscape has made lower troop levels it's mantra the whole time? Yeah. It's you guys. It's your "side". Every one of you who bashed Bush and argued that we should leave, and opposed more troops. Every one of you who called for withdrawal, and cheered on Murtha and his cronies when they listened and made those calls in Congress. Every one of you who voted for Dems in 2006 because they promised to "bring back the troops" and "end the war". You're responsible. You're the reason Iraq has drug on as long as it has.


What's bizarre is that you'll admit that less troops was a mistake, and more troops was the right answer, but still support the guy who argued the exact opposite position and is *still* arguing it. Can your blinders be any larger?