Obama Makes Case for Troop Withdrawl, Hammers McCain
(CBS)
From CBS News' John Bentley
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – Calling the war in Iraq the product of a “failed ideology” and a “fundamentally flawed political strategy,” Barack Obama sought to outline a clear differentiation between not only himself and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, but Republican nominee John McCain as well.
“The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose,” said Obama. “The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that’s what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.”
Obama also hammered McCain for misstatements he made Tuesday while in Amman, Jordan. “Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda,” Obama said, to applause from the invitation-only crowd containing several military officers. “Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.”
Repeating his assertion that he will immediately begin withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as he takes office, his plan is to remove one to two brigades a month, which would have all troops out of Iraq in 16 months. “After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy,” he said. “What I propose is not – and never has been – a precipitous drawdown.”
Stabilizing Iraq, according to Obama, will require the Iraqis taking a bigger role in running their own country. “It is precisely this kind of approach – an approach that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power – that is needed to stabilize Iraq,” he said.
The focus of America’s military might should be shifted to other countries, namely Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Obama, who advocated sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan. He also said he would send an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance to Afghanistan, “aid that is focused on reaching ordinary Afghans.” As for Pakistan, Obama voiced his support for the Pakistani people, but said that democracy must be restored there.
Obama closed his speech by addressing his statements about meeting with leaders of other countries hostile to America. “Once again, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have made the same arguments against my position on diplomacy, as if reading from the same political playbook. They say I’ll be penciling the world’s dictators on to my social calendar,” he said. “But just as they are misrepresenting my position, they are mistaken in standing up for a policy of not talking that is not working. What I’ve said is that we cannot seize opportunities to resolve our problems unless we create them. That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev. And that is what I will do as President of the United States.”
Clinton has been critical of Obama’s willingness to meet with foreign leaders of non-democratic countries, saying that those meeting should not occur if significant changes don’t happen in those countries.
UPDATE: John McCain's campaign said Obama "mischaracterizes" his position on Iraq. “John McCain wants American forces to come home when our clear and serious interests at stake in Iraq, which nearly 4,000 Americans have given their lives to secure, are truly safe, when al Qaeda is defeated; Iran's influence is contained, and the potential for a truly cataclysmic civil war in Iraq is remote," said Mark Salter, a senior adviser for the McCain campaign. "That, I think, is what is called 'making us safer.' Senator Obama's plan, if it can be charitably described as one, would do the reverse."
Cheney is our Vice President and Second in charge and was only able to articulate odious distasteful anti-American rhetoric!
Cheney only cares about profits being diverted to his Halliburton Company and doesn%u2019t care about our troops, nor the opinion of the American People! Halliburton is no longer an American Company, they%u2019ve taken (and, taken) their American Federal Treasury Monies and have skipped out on the United States to transplant their operations in the oil rich country of Dubai.
How ANTI-AMERICAN IS THAT?
"For those keeping score at home, McCain 1) made the claim on Hugh Hewitt%u2019s radio show; 2) repeated the claim at a press conference in Jordan; 3) repeated the claim again at the same event (before Joe Lieberman whispered in his ear that he was wrong); and 4) in a written statement. He %u201Cmisspoke%u201D? Hardly."
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14944.html
We are there to de-stabilize Iraq and to break it apart--that is the real plan...just as it was in Yugoslavia with Kosovo. Everything else is just Demopublican eyewash...lies and BS.
But its effort will have little effect on the ability of the average American to get a cheap loan for a new home, car or college education even as it has a large effect on U.S. banks'''' ability to fix their balance sheets by racking up fat profits.
If that sounds unfair, welcome to the latest episode of a brutal new American business ethic, in which the government bails out bad bets by risk-taking banking executives in New York with money that it borrows from middle-class families and foreign investors. The effort is gilded with fancy financial language and cloaked in the guise of a rescue that helps all citizens, but the reality is that Washington is essentially robbing the poor to help the rich.
In just the past few weeks, it has broken all of its own rules by providing hundreds of billions of taxpayer funds to brokerages at special auctions, opening a bigger "discount" window to permit a wider range of financial institutions to beg at the government till and accepting weaker-than-normal collateral such as iffy mortgage-backed securities. The Fed has put the government in the position of being the payday lender of last resort.
I think we need to do business differently and Barack Obama is the right person for the presidency as this moment in history.
Let us turn the page from doing the same thing with the same people over and over again and producing the same result again and again, nothing changes.
Barack Obama is the wave of the future, the face of the 21st century. we need to look forward in America.
We need Barack Obama now!!!