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July 23, 2008 03:33 PM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 50 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Nothing is swifter than rumor.”

–Horace

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50 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

      1. Obama, had he had his way opposing the surge, would have led to the loss of that war.

        That’s different than pretending to be the President already.

        What he’s doing on this trip is pure, empty demagoguery. What’s up with the campaign speech in a foreign country?

        Here you go.  You can watch this as you train for our upcoming boxing match.

        1. when you can’t win the debate you resort to threats. Is having proof of the Media’s bias protecting your candidate too much to handle? How far out of reality are you?

          You were repeatedly asked to explain on several threads how the surge has succeeded without simply claiming it has. The surge met how many benchmarks set out before it? 3 of 18?

          1. The surge has now met 15 of 18 benchmarks.  Maybe you should read a newspaper.

            I’m not threatening you in any way.  I’m offering you a safe form of anger management, which you obviously need badly.  A refereed boxing match with protective gear.

            Comparatively, the media is much more in the tank for Obama.  It’s a joke that you wouldn’t acknowledge that.  But it’s not a surprise.

              1. not supporting the troops and their success.

                Seriously, if McCain is pegging his entire campaign on his support for the surge, vs. Obama’s skepticism, it’s a losing argument. Sure, dumping tens of thousands more troops onto the streets in Iraq is going to quell violence. But that’s such a tiny part of the national security puzzle, including the Iraqi political benchmarks, Iranian influence in Iraq, Iranian nukes, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, striking al Qaeda across the border into Pakistan, talks with North Korea and Syria, even stabilizing the Sudan.

                For McCain to claim he was right about the surge acknowledges that he’s been wrong about every other aspect of the Iraq War and missed the mark on the rest of the world, until the last couple weeks, when he’s parroted the Bush Administration by adopting some of Obama’s policies. McCain even has to resort to fiction, made-up sequences and outrageous lies (“Obama doesn’t honor the troops”) to make his point about the surge. But it’s all he’s got, even if it ain’t much.

              2. Are you really saying that the surge (not just the troops, but the significant change in tactics under Petraeus) was just a coincidence to the 80% drop in violence?

                Come on, David. You’re more rational than that.

                1. 1) We now have ethnic division in Iraq. So all of that fighting is over.

                  2) Iraqis got sick of the ongoing violence that was accomplishing nothing. So they turned against the terrorists.

                  3) Al-Sadr decided to reduce the violence of his troops, for a variety of reasons.

                  4) We pushed more of the effort into Iraqi hands. Al-Anbar was starting to work well before the surge. So change of tactics, but no surge ont his one.

                  5) The surge put more feet on the street and that reduced violence where they are. So the surge helped here.

                  So yes the surge helped, but it was a small to medium part of the help.

            1. with a big assist from the Sunni Awakening movement which preceded the surge by months, McCain’s usual confusion notwithstanding, and the Sadr truce. Arguably, those are actually the major factors contributing to the present improved security situation and those are elements that are both fragile and beyond our control.

              At this point we are in a holding pattern and the way forward isn’t strictly or even primarily military but political and diplomatic.

              The choice is to stay in this holding pattern indefinitely, continuing to occupy Iraq and maintain American control over the Iraqi people (and oil) as McCain proposes or to set a course for an end to the American occupation of Iraq and the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people as soon as can be safely accomplished, as Obama proposes.

              If the Shia and Sunnis now cooperating with us become convinced that we have the intention of maintaining control  indefinitely, the insurgency will resume.  They can’t look kindly on the prospect of being subjugated to infidels for 100 years.

              As Obama points out, American interests are not confined to Iraq but extend to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Israeli/Palestinian situation, our standing in the world, our relations with other emerging economic powers and, to a far greater degree than McCain is willing to recognize, the effect of all our decisions in these matters on our own economy and the continuing strength of our stressed over-stretched military.

              The surge was well executed but, because  the resolution of the situation in Iraq is never going to solved by military means, it hasn’t  brought “victory” in any potentially enduring way. This is not a “war” that can be “won” by military means. We need to stop thinking of it, as McCain does, in those terms in order to get to where we can let go of the tigers tail for ourselves and for the Iraqis who were dragged into our war on terror for no valid reason in the first place.

                1. Would the awakening worked without the surge?  He says no–I say maybe

                  He doesn’t ask the corallaries

                  Would the surge have worked without the awakening?  I say maybe.

                  Would the surge have worked without the awakening and the JAM truce?  No way.

                  The point is you can debate analysis but you can not debate the facts–the Anbar awakening came first and John McCain was flat wrong on this.  The real issue for me is that CBS covered up for McCain’s lie/mispeak/confusion.  

                  1. You are plugging your ears and yelling.  

                    Admit it – against all odds, Bush did something right by following the military’s advice, installing the man who wrote the actual book on counterinsurgency and letting someone more interested in results than Rumsfeld run the war.

                    It worked.  It makes you look silly if you continue to deny that it did.  Al Qaeda didn’t just get bored and stop blowing up markets full of Shiites.

                    1. I am just saying:

                      1. the conditions on the ground (JAM truce, Anbar Awakening) began changing before the surge–the success in Iraq has multiple factors–remove 1 would there still have been success? maybe.  Remove 2 would there still be success? no.

                      2.  McCain mistated the facts and CBS covered it up.

        2. How pretentious for McCain to hang the “success” of the surge on his campaign banner. Wasn’t his idea, and he wasn’t there on the street. He’s a desperate man.

          When are you going to find a different way of insulting people other than “you silly little man”? Is that what your mother calls you?

          1. McCain was calling for more troops as early as 2004.

            When are you going to find a different way of insulting people other than “you silly little man”? Is that what your mother calls you?

            Sorry, but this coming from the silly little man that was being “funny” by telling me he fucked my wife doesn’t carry much water.

            My wife would tune you up worse than I would.  Hehehe.

            1. citing the Sunni Awakening as the result of the surge that occurred months after the movement started is that “surge” refers to the counter insurgency so he never erred at all.  And here we all thought it meant the surge in troops to Iraq!  

              No says McCain.  The “surge” is the counter insurgency that started  months before the troop increase and the additional troops that we thought constituted the “surge” were just helping with the “surge”.

              This certainly is NOT the way it’s been presented to us all these months but that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.  So he wasn’t wrong or confused on his Iraq war history at all.  The rest of us were. Silly everybody on the planet besides McCain.  Right.

                1. the overwhelming majority of Americans do not approve of the Bush-McCain Iraq War and want our troops out. In fact, even the Iraqi’s want us out. But McCain just like Bush will not listen to anyone but his circle of chickenhawks who want to keep American troops and contractors in Iraq for the next 100 years.

                    1. but after hearing McCain call Obama a traitor over and over while Senator Obama in the traveling over seas has me at the limit

                    2. No he didn’t.  He made the point that Obama appears to be be willing to lose the Iraq war in order to win an election. It’s a reasonable conclusion to come to after seeing Obama’s waffling and refusal to acknowledge that the surge, which he opposed, has worked, and has created the opportunity for us to leave sooner than later.

                      You’re always mad anyway.  Do you need a hug?  I’m here for you if you do.

                    3. he’s a warmonger, bought and sold by the military-industrial complex that is sucking this country dry.

                      He’s a prime participant in the culture of fear, that has crippled the soul of the country. HE has no soul. He’s crippled in more ways than one.

                      Not to mention, he can’t keep basic facts striaght, and knows nothing of foreign policy other that Hooahh.

                  1. MSNBC teases the results of a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll coming this evening:

                    With the news that Iraq’s prime minister wants the US to set a timetable for withdrawal, 60% of registered voters believe it’s a good idea for the US to set such a timetable, while 30% say it’s a bad idea.

                    Twice as many voters agree with Obama and al-Maliki on Iraq than agree with McCain — after weeks of being buffeted by the McCain message that calling for a withdrawal timeline is tantamount to advocating for surrender, defeat, and even dishonor to the troops.

                    http://tpmelectioncentral.talk…

                    1. Maliki and Obama don’t agree with each other.  From the Wapo.

                      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.”

                      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.

                    2. Just to add more confirmation to the painfully obvious, it turns out that not only did Prime Minister Maliki say what he said. According to Der Spiegel, his office signed off on this specific quote before the article went to press. In other words, the entire misunderstanding, misstatement, mistranslation, miswhatever meme is utter nonsense. You knew that. But just to remove any doubt.

  2. My mom just won re-election to her legislative seat (in Hawaii).

    The deadline to file to be on the primary & general ballot was yesterday (info here) and she has no challangers. In Hawaii they do not allow write-ins (it only takes 25 signatures to be on the ballot) and therefore, once the deadline passes, if you have no challangers, you have won your election.

    So 2 more years of great news for Hawaii!!! Plus my mom stays busy.

    1. They tend to hold the really good cons during the busy time in my business.  Oh well, I can still enjoy it vicariously through all the different sites I visit whose writers will be there.  Maybe someday.

    1. I really like Betsy Markey, I’m knocking on wood that she can take out Musgrave once and for all. Northern Colorado deserves wayyy better representation than MM.

  6. ….and to bail out the “MACSs.”  The vote was 272 to 152.  All four Colorado D’s voted yes, and (surprise, surprise) the three Stoogies, Musty, Lamborn and Tancredo, voted no.

      Here’s hoping Betsy Markey is putting something in the mail to CD 4 voters as we speak….

    1. .

      I went looking for he story,

      after being away from the office a couple of hours,

      and couldn’t find a trace.

      Thanks for verifying for me that it was once there.

      .  

  9. “I’ll take a thoughtful, intellectual, young person over a hidebound, rigid, intellectually deficient older jackass any day. They are, after all, the ones who have fucked things up to kingdom come.” Digby

    The 3 presidents younger? Clinton, Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt…..They all made some serious blunders in their early days of office.

    I think we have in Obama, an intellectual that actually can learn from history, as opposed to a president (GWB) who failed to take into consideration that “shock and awe” wouldn’t heal a 1400 year split between Sunni and Shia. Fucking idiot. McSame is just as ignorant.

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