With polls showing no statistically significant advantage for Barack Obama, and some with a lead for McCain, Obama seems desperate to shift his positions to be more moderate… his latest flip-flop is on drilling. First he was against it, now he’s for “some” drilling and tapping the strategic oil reserve.
22 comments August 4th, 2008
Looks like Barack Obama is taking some cues from Big Brother, by turning his website into his own Ministry of Truth:
Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.
The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.
“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.
The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.
Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.
It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”
Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is “not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events.”
Or, more accurate to reflect his flip flops and false predictions.
35 comments July 15th, 2008
Wow, Obama goes back on his own pledges so much, one can only wonder what his position on an issue will be from day to day.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) promised primary voters a swift withdrawal from Iraq, in clear language still on his Web site: “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”
Not anymore. Heading into the holiday weekend, Obama and his advisers repudiated that pledge, saying he is reevaluating his plan and will incorporate advice from commanders on the ground when he visits Iraq later this month.
A top Obama adviser said he is not “wedded” to a specific timeline and Obama said Thursday he plans to “refine” his plan.
This is not going to sit well with the liberal base that delivered the nomination to him…
“Sen. Barack Obama left open the possibility of slowing his promised, 16-month withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, saying he would consult with military commanders on an upcoming trip to the region to ensure a withdrawal would keep troops safe and Iraq stable.”
“Is Barack Obama softening his Iraq withdrawal time line? … On the campaign website, Obama says he would “immediately” begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and would have “all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months.” But at a news conference, he was asked about concerns by some that he was backing off on that timetable.”
“Democrat Barack Obama is opening the door to altering his Iraq policy. Campaigning in North Dakota, Obama says his upcoming trip to Iraq could alter his plan to bring U.S. troops home within 16 months. The Illinois senator says it all depends on what he hears in consultations with military commanders there.”
“As he arrived for a campaign stop in North Dakota, Mr. Obama told reporters on Thursday that he intended to conduct “a thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy during a forthcoming trip to the country. … It’s been more than two years since Mr. Obama has visited Iraq, which Republicans have used as a point of criticism. After dismissing an invitation from Mr. McCain to visit Iraq together this summer as a “political stunt,” Mr. Obama began making preparations for his own trip to Iraq.”
48 comments July 3rd, 2008
What would you call Obama’s broken pledge that if his general election opponent accepted public financing for his campaign that he would as well.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: A nightmare for Democrats, according to Marist - McCain leads Obama and only barely trails Hillary in New York. Polls, as I endlessly point out, are weak reeds, especially this far out from the actual voting…but such polls (and there are a lot of them these days showing this sort of thing) have to have hearts trembling with fear over at the DNC, and explain why Dean wants this whole thing wrapped up by June 1st.
UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: I think it is quite clear from the attacks by the DNC against McCain that the Democrats are afraid of him. Now Dean is claiming people are concerned about McCain’s age.
36 comments April 10th, 2008
The Washington Post gives the top five flip-flops for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton…
So now, let’s hear all our friends on the left with their spin explain why these aren’t flip-flops…
17 comments February 25th, 2008
This story from the Washington Post clearly proves how today’s objections to waterboarding, particularly from Congressional Democrats, is purely political grandstanding. When briefed on the interrogation techniques used against captured terrorists, the reaction from those in the room “was not just approval, but encouragement.” Even current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there and “did not raise objections at the time.”
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
[…]
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”
And where does this newfound disapproval come from? The answer is obvious, and I’ve been saying it for a long time. Democrats have forgotten 9/11 and the lessons they should have learned from it.
“In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic,” said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. “But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’ ”
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 — by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding — did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey’s confirmation hearings for attorney general.
This article also proves that Republican lawmakers were speaking truthfully when they said members of Congress had been fully briefed on the interrogation methods used against captured and suspected terrorists. Opposition to the practice makes for good political theatre when trying to make a spectacle of Mukasy’s confirmation hearings, or what is bound to happen over the issue of the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes. The bottom line is this: Democrats knew about waterboarding and supported it. Their opposition to it today comes from their desire to further politicize the war on terror, and undermine our national security.
67 comments December 9th, 2007
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