Obama Responds to Bush Announcement on Iraq

[bigtree]

September 9, 2008



DAYTON, Ohio (AFP) — Speaking to reporters here Tuesday, Obama accused Bush of "tinkering around the edges" and "kicking the can down the road to the next president" with his plans to remove 8,000 US troops from Iraq in the coming months and send 4,500 to Afghanistan by January.

"At this point what it appears is that the next president will inherit a status quo that is still unstable," Obama said, adding that his Republican White House rival John McCain was bent on the same course as Bush.

The United States would continue to spend 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a 79 billion surplus fueled by booming oil prices and feels no US pressure to pursue political reconciliation, he said.

The Illinois senator said that on Afghanistan, he was "glad that the president is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years."

"Now, the choice for the American people could not be clearer. John McCain has been talking a lot about change, but he's running for four more years of the same foreign policy that we've had under George Bush.

read: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5heBLJB4Ja_7VKyCqc6sKGxewjeBA




In a 15-minute press conference, the Illinois senator told reporters Bush's plan would mean keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq when the military is overstretched and spending $10 billion a month there while the Iraqi government sits on a $79 billion surplus.

The senator said he was pleased Bush had announced more troops for Afghanistan -- something he said he had been advocating for years -- but said that plan also came up short.

"The most substantial increase will come when an additional Army brigade is deployed five months from now - in February, after the President has left office," Obama said.

"Sen. McCain goes even further than President Bush in opposing the sovereign Iraqi government's own support for a timetable to redeploy our troops, while offering no plan to press the Iraqis to reconcile," he said.

read: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/09/1367999.aspx



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"His plan comes up short — it is not enough troops, not enough resources, with not enough urgency," Obama said. "The next president will inherit a status quo that is still unstable."

The Democratic presidential nominee said Bush doesn't understand that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the war on terrorism, not Iraq. He said his Republican White House rival, John McCain, doesn't get that, either.

"Senator McCain will continue the overwhelming focus on Iraq that has taken our eye off of the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11," Obama said.

"It's time to change our foreign policy," he said.

read: http://www.ktla.com/pages/landing_election_news/?Obama-says-Bushs-plan-for-Afghanistan-Ir=1&blockID=52581&feedID=26





"The president's talk of return on success is a new name for continuing the same strategic mistakes that have dominated our foreign policy for over five years," Obama told reporters.

"John McCain has been talking a lot about change, but he is running for four more years of the same foreign policy that we've had under President Bush," Obama said, charging the GOP candidate of emphasizing Iraq while losing focus of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he called the true central fronts of the war on terrror.

""Because seven years after 9/11, we are still fighting a war without end in Iraq and we still haven't taken out the terrorists responsible for 9/11. We've still heard no explanation for why Osama bin Laden is still at large," Obama said, "because that's where John McCain and George Bush's judgment have gotten us."

read: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_Bush_Iraq_plan_continues_same_0909.html

[bigtree]

1. only 20 or so folks here want to see what their candidate said on Iraq?

. . . after Bush announced he was holding the troops hostage there until after the election?

[bigtree]

2. did I miss the Iraq thread today?

[MadrasT]

3. Thank you - great collection of links and pictures.

K & R

:kick:

[bigtree]

6. the non-response here to his comments is baffling

(nag. nag. I know)

[MadrasT]

9. Just not juicy enough, I guess...

He probably needed to toss the word "eBay" in there somewhere to get anyone's attention here today. :sarcasm:

:kick:

[gratuitous]

4. gratuitous responds to Bush Announcement

Looks like his mouth is writing checks that his ass can't cash. Again. How many times will our popular media people get duped by this empty song-and-dance? Bush won't be deciding shit in connections with troop levels come 2009, and he knows it. But the media will print anything he says, and pretend it's true. For no apparent reason.

[bigtree]

5. right

the next supposed cuts are to come in February.

"His mouth is writing checks that his ass can't cash." Believe it.

[stillcool]

7. bigtree you are the best!

Maybe you should have put "Obama Sucks" in your header. That always draws a crowd. Thank you so much for providing the words spoken by our candidate. It is a pleasure to read what is actually said.

[bigtree]

8. heh

:thumbsup:

[halobeam]

10. K and R

[bigtree]

11. pt.2 interview with Keith Olbermann

OLBERMANN: Let me switch over to Iraq and people's reaction to you and Iraq and Iraq as a subject in general. Your predictions about the surge, your language about the surge, seem to have turned out to be just about 100 percent on the spot . . . If you are right, why have the Republicans and the conservative media been so effective in suggesting that you were wrong and somehow you need to atone for that?

OBAMA: Well, you know, it's interesting. It's not just the conservative media. I think that a lot of the mainstream media has picked up on this. Partly, I think, it is a legitimate surprise on the part of a lot of people that the immediate violence went down so significantly. And I think our troops deserve all the credit in the world for that happening, along with the Sunni awakening that occurred, the Shia militias standing down. There was a convergence of forces that have reduced violence in a way I think many of us didn't anticipate, including me.

What has not changed at all is the underlying fact that, No. 1, Iraq was a huge strategic blunder that strengthened Iran, took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, let al Qaeda off the hook, and we've got to make a strategic shift.

The second thing that hasn't changed is the Iraqi government still hasn't taken responsibility, that they aren't spending their own oil revenues. They've got $80 billion parked in New York banks while we're spending $10 billion a month. And I believe, and continue to believe, that until we send a clear signal that we are going to withdraw in a phased, systematic way, that they're not going to start getting their act together.

Now, Prime Minister Maliki has suggested that a timetable now makes sense. Even the Bush administration has been discussing a time horizon. John McCain is the only guy who still is trying to figure out ways to stay, instead of ways for us to go.

And it is important for us to understand that, unless we start putting more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis, we are going to be hamstrung in dealing with the larger battle against terror that is so critical to our long-term security.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26627838/page/2/