Against it before he was for it?

Previewing the President's speech on Iraq this evening while we prep for KT's challenge.

At Monday's White House briefing, spokesman Robert Gibbs gave reporters a preview of President Obama's speech on Iraq. Obama will apparently take credit for withdrawing U.S. troops -- "We are completing a drawdown of almost 100,000 troops that…many did not think was possible," Gibbs said -- but is unlikely to acknowledge any special role played by George W. Bush's troop surge. Gibbs said Obama plans to call Bush before the speech, but through repeated questioning would not admit that the surge played any especially important role in the war's progress.

A couple of things here. Yes, the troop drawdown was executed at the behest of the Commander-in-Chief, President Obama, but let's not forget that he is simply honoring the troop drawdown agreement put into place by the Bush administration. Obama's on watch, however, and such is the nature of politics where you get the blame as well as the credit for what transpires or was allowed to transpire while you are in office.

But the "many did not think was possible,"... Again, with the false straw mans. Similar to just a few days ago when in response to the persistent birth certificate question, Obama responded, "I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead,”. He's answering questions no one is asking. Those wing-nuts just want to see it once, that's all. And up close!

Here's more from Gibbs, yesterday:

"The president always believed that you would change part of the security situation by vastly increasing the number of troops," Gibbs said. "But again I think it was important -- and the president was criticized for this throughout the campaign -- and that is saying that we were not going to accomplish all of what needed to be done in Iraq simply militarily, that there had to be a political accommodation.

(italics, ours)
Always?

Eh...

OK. OK. So, maybe he was just against it before he was for it. It happens.

Like when you go from being a junior senator to potentially the most powerful man on the planet.

By January 2008, with the surge working, Obama revised his remarks at a debate in New Hampshire: "Now, I had no doubt -- and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence."

In the Team O inner circle, this was always referred to as the great 30,000 additional troop un-surge.

Linked articles strongly hint that there will not be any public acknowledgement of the Bush surge plan or of Bush himself, in the speech tonight and that's a shame. For an administration that possesses a massive grace deficit, reaching out to the former President would be, we don't know.... possibly post-partisan and maybe even unifying.

The Surge: Porkulus style Pt. II

There’s good news and bad new with respect to porkulus today.

First, the bad news:

Stimulus bill spending has slowed to a trickle, despite President Obama's June order to his Cabinet to speed it up.

The average stimulus spending per week has dropped severely, to just $4.2 billion over the past month from $9.7 billion during the prior four months. The government spent $2.9 billion in the week ending Aug. 7.

Now, the good news:

Stimulus bill spending has slowed to a trickle, despite President Obama's June order to his Cabinet to speed it up.

The average stimulus spending per week has dropped severely, to just $4.2 billion over the past month from $9.7 billion during the prior four months. The government spent $2.9 billion in the week ending Aug. 7.

Recall how back at the beginning of July, the President, responding to criticism that not enough porkulus money was being spent, boldly announced that the time was right for the porkulus spigot to be opened full throttle, flooding the land with tax payer money

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he is ramping up stimulus spending exponentially in the next three months, allowing the administration to “save or create” 600,000 jobs — four times as many as during the first 100 days since he signed the bill.

“We’re in a position to really accelerate,” Obama said, unveiling plans to boost spending on national parks, summer youth jobs, veterans medical centers, police and teachers.

We’re not sure about your math but porkulus spending shrinking by over 50% doesn’t square with the President’s math.

But as we inferred, the less money that is spent on this hopeless program means less money that is spent and more money that we can potentially recover if porkulus is ever put down.

Remember, folks, these are the same people that want to manage your healthcare.

H/T: Hot Air

"Hard is not Hopeless"

What if a country won a war and no one heard?

Here we look at war as armed conflict between opposing forces, and do our best to keep people informed about what's going on in the wars in which the United States is involved. But we keep an eye on Washington, too, as decisions made there can have obvious impact on the actual war. Their words and deeds can simplify and complicate the life or death tasks with which we are confronted. This is the ideal; politicians engaged and aware of the issues they debate, hopefully achieving a consensus that meets the needs of the republic and reflects the will of a majority of informed Americans. But over the past two years the ideal approached the absurd as the reality gap between the war in Washington and the actual war in Iraq widened and Americans were informed by media with standing armies in Washington completely overwhelming a small corps of reporters in Iraq.

In this series we'll examine that "war in Washington" and the widening of that gap, in hopes of explaining to at least a few members of that public exactly why a war was won without their knowledge or consent.

This is how it began.

(emphasis ours)

More here from the Mudville Gazette

P.S. The title is a quote from General David Petraeus at his Senate confirmation hearing for promotion to his post as head of the U.S. forces in Iraq and where he also made his case for the Surge.

A very Kerry moment

… because “air-raiding villages and killing civilians” is all part of the master plan over there in Iraq.

And doesn’t “have enough troops” over in Iraq as an alternative to all that indiscriminate slaughter kind of sound like support of the Surge plan which was in full swing at the time he said this back in August of ‘07?

For the Surge before he was against it... or do we have it backwards? Like it matters with this guy.

H/T: Hot Air

Our Generals almost cost us Iraq?

Dude...

In one respect, the actions taken by military opponents of the surge, e.g. "foot-dragging," "slow-rolling" and selective leaking are, unfortunately, all-too-characteristic of U.S. civil-military relations during the last decade and a half. But the picture Mr. Woodward draws is far more troubling. Even after the policy had been laid down, the bulk of the senior U.S. military leadership -- the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, the rest of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. Abizaid's successor, Adm. William Fallon, actively worked against the implementation of the president's policy.

If Mr. Woodward's account is true, it means that not since Gen. McClellan attempted to sabotage Lincoln's war policy in 1862 has the leadership of the U.S. military so blatantly attempted to undermine a president in the pursuit of his constitutional authority. It should be obvious that such active opposition to a president's policy poses a threat to the health of the civil-military balance in a republic.


More from M.T. Owens fantastic article on Bob Woodward’s “The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008”, here

Hope you all enjoyed your summer... school's back in session

Even Barack Obama, who opposed the Iraq troop surge, has finally acknowledged its success. But some of his fellow Democrats in Congress apparently remain unconvinced. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin teamed up to block a vote on a bipartisan resolution "recognizing the strategic success of the troop surge in Iraq" and thanking our men and women in uniform for their efforts.

Article from WSJ here.

Yep, the Harry and Nancy show is back and with it… more madcap and wacky shenanigans that only they can provide.

Cool thing about these blogs is that you can go back and see what’s been written about these same subjects. Hey, what’s this….

But make no mistake about what they are really thinking. They were betrayed by House Whip, James Clyburn, who in a fit of candor admitted that a successful surge would be “a real problem for us”. One can assume that “us” meant anti-war Democrats, most elected Democrats and certainly Democratic Presidential candidates who are now faced with the reality of finding a new tact in which to criticize the war effort and the Administration’s conduct of the same.

Golly, that'd be us in all our full, proud and profane glory, here.

Just keep this in your back pocket if you're struggling a bit this coming November.

H/T: Weasel Zippers

Large city in Upper Midwest Province could benefit from a Surge strategy.

...Because nothing says “peace” like throwing bricks through windows, puncturing tires and assaulting delegates.

Anti-war anarchists putting on their performance art piece, "Irony" at the RNC Convention. More here.

H/T: Weasel Zippers