Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 9:54:55 PM
Barack Obama's refusal to admit he was wrong on President Bush's
successful change of strategy in Iraq is as laughable as it is
disingenuous. It also calls into question his qualifications to be
president.
Read Full Article
But when he was confronted this week by ABC News' Terry Moran with
the success of the surge, asking if he would have supported it knowing
what he knows now, Obama's answer was "no."
Along with his refusal to admit the mistake came something else: an
endless stream of double talk obviously designed to distract from our
military's successes in Iraq. Obama spoke of "a combination of
political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time
as terrific work by our troops." He added that "it wasn't any doubt
that you have an additional 20,000 troops, and where they are right
there, it is going to have an impact."
So after insisting the surge "will do the reverse" of quelling
"sectarian violence," Obama now claims what he really said was that it
would "have an impact" — meaning a positive impact.
As craftily worded as this may be, it's simply a lie. Moreover, the
"political factors" Obama refers to — the Anbar Awakening in which
Sunni chiefs turned against al-Qaida — were, in fact, primarily
engineered by the U.S. military's dealings with those chiefs.
Obama's claim that "the Sunnis might have made the same decisions at
that time" is no less than an insult to the U.S. commanders who worked
so hard to convince the Iraqis it was in their interests.
No wonder the Obama campaign earlier this month removed the
anti-surge statements from its Web site, and stopped listing the surge
as part of "The Problem" in its section on Iraq.
Obama's "problem" turned out to be the solution, proving again how
feeble his foreign policy judgment would be as commander-in-chief. His
dishonesty about it disqualifies him all the more.