The Washington Post questions Barack Obama and the media about the spin surrounding his proposals for withdrawal from Iraq, and at the same time questions either the intelligence or the honesty of the Democratic nominee on the surge:
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.â€
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.
McCain, Maliki, the Administation have all been saying the 16 month timetable will not work, and now Petraeus needed to share that with Obama in their meeting. There has to be some flexibility , yet the Messiah doesn’t seem to grasp that. He says we must focus only on Afghanistan because Iraq is a distraction.
This got me thinking about WWII and how we put all the troops in one country and when we were done there, moved all of them onto the next country. We didn’t have the ability to fight on multiple fronts then, and we still don’t! But I digress. The WaPo is more than irked at the assertion that:
Iraq is not strategically important to the US:
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.
Yes, we do need more resources in Afghanistan, but that is because we can not go into Pakistan. Where is the outreach to the NATO community? Shouldn’t that be a focus for Obama? Bringing our allies together to secure Afghanistan based on the ever growing threat from Iran would seem to be what Obama should be focusing on.
In all fairness to Obama, He is sticking to the Democrats bold plan:
Hold on for 10 or 15 years and they’ll have a bounty of energy options. They promise. But no oil shale. No clean coal. No nuclear power. And definitely no more oil.Â
Exit question: Did he really find support for his withdrawal plan?