David Corn

If our once and future leaders can't ask the tough questions now - how will they do so later?

If they aren't able to expose the abject failure of the current policy how would they recognize it in their own administration?

If our once and future leaders can't ask the tough questions now - how will they do so later?

If they aren't able to expose the abject failure of the current policy how would they recognize it in their own administration?
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Great question for Obama who wants to keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq by 2010.

Great question for Obama who wants to keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq by 2010.
Posted by: LBH | April 8, 2008 6:12 PM

How many do you think are necessary?

This morning on Today, Barack Obama offered a vigorous defense of his troop withdrawal proposal, as well as a critique of the administration's Iraq War policy. Similar to his rival Hillary Clinton's appearance on Morning Joe, he refrained from mentioning or furthering a dispute with her, preferring to stay on the offensive against McCain and Bush's Iraq war policy in general.

VIEIRA: You've said when, Senator, that if you are elected, that within 16 months you are going to bring all the troops home from Iraq. Senator McCain said yesterday that is a reckless promise you cannot possibly keep, a failure of leadership. And even military leaders say any withdrawal of troops would be dictated by security on the ground. So how can you guarantee you can pull out those troops in just 16 months?

OBAMA: Meredith, I've been very consistent in saying that we are going to set a timetable and we will have a prudent pace of withdrawal, one to two brigades per month. At that pace, we can have combat troops out within approximately 16 months. That will be about two years from now, Meredith, which means that this war will have lasted seven years.

VIEIRA: That's if everything goes well, sir. What if there's chaos?

OBAMA: Meredith, there's the possibility of chaos right now as we saw in Basra. So, what we can do is we can stay there in perpetuity. But if we can't have the Iraqi government resolve some of its conflicts in seven years, we won't have it done in 14 years or 21 years. The height of irresponsibility was going in, in the first place, and not having these questions answered, as John McCain ratified and went along with. I think it compounds the irresponsibility if all we're doing is simply moving the goalpost. We won't leave because violence is up. Now we don't leave because violence is down, as we've made progress. And the notion that we would have a long-term occupation of Iraq is not only unsustainable from our military's perspective and our financial perspective - we're spending $400 million a day - it's also distracting us from going after al Qaeda and those who actually perpetrated the deaths of 3,000 Americans on September 11th.

*****

a prudent pace of withdrawal, one to two brigades per month. At that pace, we can have combat troops out within approximately 16 months. That will be about two years from now,

2008 + 2 = 2010

So Bush has so many troops there a reasonable withdrawl would mean exactly those numbers.

Baghdad Orders Lockdown As Petraeus Testifies

Unauthorized vehicles will be banned in Baghdad from 5 a.m. to midnight on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the city's capture by U.S. troops, the AP reports.

The decision by the Iraqi military command for Baghdad was announced on Iraqi state TV.

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is threatening to lift a seven-month freeze on his Mahdi Army militia if the Iraqi government does not halt attacks on his followers or set a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal.

(huffpo)

*****

"Nothing fails like success."
Gerald Nachman

Petraeus, Crocker admit Pakistan/Afghanistan is greater al Qaeda threat than Iraq

(C&L)

****

Talk about an admission. We have lost over 900 troops and many more wounded since the start or the surge.

What have we gained? How are Americans safer while the boogy men are in other countries?

a prudent pace of withdrawal, one to two brigades per month. At that pace, we can have combat troops out within approximately 16 months. That will be about two years from now,

2008 + 2 = 2010
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Either Obamas lying or his foreign policy advisor is lying or niether knows what the hell they're talking about. Take your pick!

SEN. BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region? … Which would you pick, Mr. Ambassador?

AMB. CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

BARACK OBAMA

"The most important issue is still the one that was asked in September which is how has this war made us safer and at what point do we know that there is success so we can start bringing our troops home," Obama told NBC's "Today Show."

"My belief is that we are not in a situation where staying another 10, 15 or 20 years is going to change the fundamentals on the ground," Obama said.

"What we have not seen is the Iraqi government using the space that was created not only by our troops but by the standdown of the militias in places like Basra, to use that to move forward on a political agenda that could actually bring stability," Obama said.

Obama, who leads Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, won't get his turn to speak until near the end of the day. Only four Democrats rank lower than him on the Foreign Relations Committee, but aides said he planned to attend most of the session to hear Petraeus.

Appearing on NBC, Obama also criticized McCain for supporting the war from the beginning and indefinitely into the future. "John McCain has not offered any clear point at which he suggests it's time for us to move our troops home," Obama said.

(ap)

Gen. Petraeus painted a much more somber picture of Iraq than many of his Republican cheerleaders:

"It's why I've repeatedly noted that we haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible."

(TPM)

Remember: They Are Liars

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, "enough to kill several million people," according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of several mobile biological weapons labs.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was operating an "advanced" nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq had been seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa for use in this "advanced" nuclear weapons program.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons."

They lied.

They claimed America needed to invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq in order to remove this menace from our world. "It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country," went the White House line, "to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."

They lied.

"Simply stated," said Dick Cheney in August of 2002, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

Liar.

"Right now," said George W. Bush in September of 2002, "Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of nuclear weapons."

Liar.

"We know for a fact," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in January of 2003, "that there are weapons there."

Liar.

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction," said Colin Powell in February of 2003, "is determined to make more."

Liar.

"We know where they are," said Donald Rumsfeld in March of 2003. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, south, west and north somewhat."

Liar.

"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about," said Paul Wolfowitz in March of 2003. "Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."

Liar.

"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were," said Condoleezza Rice in June of 2003, "where they were stored."

Liar.

"I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country," said Gen. Tommy Franks in April of 2003. "Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, 'Oh, well, there's actually another site,' and we'll find it there, I'm not sure."

Wrong.

"Before the war," said Gen. Michael Hagee in May of 2003, "there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found."

Wrong.

"Given time," said Gen. Richard Myers in May of 2003, "given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction."

Wrong.

"Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do," said Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton in May of 2003, "because I think there's a lot of information out there."

Wrong.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to give testimony before the Senate regarding the current state of affairs in that battle-savaged country. He is a political general, one of many America has seen and heard over the last five years, one who would leap nude from the Capitol dome before telling the real truth about matters in Iraq ... or who would speak using words fed to him by liars, and thus be wrong.

Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.

They lie.

Period.

End of file.

The ISG, which was co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, had called in December 2006 for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops by April 2008, leaving the remaining troops – around 80,000 – to focus on training and equipping Iraqi security forces, conducting operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and protecting U.S. civilian personnel.

*****

Funny how numbers actually sound the same, only one failed surge between the dates.

No contrition will be forthcoming from any admistration lackeys for continuing to mislead tyhe public about Iraq.

Bush will order bombing of Iran before he leaves office. He can't help it. He has to leave behind such a big mess that no matter who follows him as president it will be hell. I think that Cheney hopes to make an unobserved getaway while everyone is worried about terrorist blowback from Iran.

Lets ship them both to the Hague and have done with it. The GOP will not allow them to be prosecuted in the USA. It would kill the party. The supreme court will not permit a conservative president to be imprisoned or executed in the USA.

Funny how numbers actually sound the same, only one failed surge between the dates

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Funny how you libs are so eager to declare the US has lost the war and the surge a failure but want to take the same failed surge to Afganistan because that's the Dem talking points.

Why can't libs think for themselves? Never mind, I already know the answer.

By the way, Obama said he wants a complete withdrawl by 2010 not a 60,000 to 80,000 level-

Just admit for once that Obama is lying~ he's not going to stop the war~ he can't ~ he's only telling you libs what you want to hear so you'll be all googoo gaga about voting for him.