Obama's Lack of an Iraq Plan

March 9, 2008Mark Noonan

Just like his talk on NAFTA, it looks like Obama is not to be trusted with what he says on Iraq, either.

The American Mind has the transcript:

STEPHEN SACKUR: Let me stop you just for a moment. You said that he’ll revisit it when he goes to the White House. So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out within sixteen months, isn’t a commitment isn’t it?

POWER: You can’t make a commitment in whatever month we’re in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can’t even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator.

He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn’t have daily access now as a result of not being the president.

So to think, I mean it would be the height of ideology, you know, to sort of say, well I said it therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality entreats me –

SACKUR: Ok, so the 16 months is negotiable?

POWER: It’s the best case scenario…

Power, of course, is now out due to calling Hillary a monster, but I think this is rather descriptive of the vacuity of Obama on foreign and defense policy. This is the man who has repeatedly said he’d “end” the war in Iraq in 2009…and here’s his senior foreign policy advisor saying, in essence, “well, we just don’t know”…and, of course, there’s nothing wrong with not knowing exactly what you’ll do come January 2009 but for crying out loud, if you don’t know then don’t go making fool statements implying that you do know!

I was wandering around a book store on Saturday and espied Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, and it occured to me just how inane that title is…like something put together by a publisher using a focus group to figure out a title which sounds best. And it does sound good, but it doesn’t actually mean anything – being hopeful is audacious? If you are audacious you’ll be hopeful? I figure an earlier version of the title was Yes We Can Have Audacious Hope – but it was rejected as too many words for a liberal to grasp all at once…

This man, Barack Obama: no executive experience; minimal legislative experience; never held a job which required results…a lot of words. That is all.

plainjane March 9, 2008 / 8:52 pm

30. SEW | March 9th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

I feel so sad for you. To me the first sentence in #28 brings me a sense of joy. The Iraqi people themselves are taking responsibility for governing their own nation. If you think the first sentence represents doom and gloom then I believe you are a true Hannity/Kristol type neocon. I have no use in debating you, because your heart is blinded with a feeling you are superior and know what is best for all.

It is moments like this that separate the 29% from the others within the Republican Party. Average Republicans would read the first sentence and agree a sense of forced personal responsibility is taking hold, because the British are no longer there to separate them.
plainjane March 9, 2008 / 9:03 pm

.his advisors say…31. Mark Noonan | March 9th, 2008 at 8:45

Mark, have you done your homework and been to Senator Obama’s web site http://www.barackobama.com to get Senator Obama’s complete book on policy positions? Since you operate a political blog, I would think you would. If you take issue with positions brought up in the text by all means bring them up for debate.
Mark Noonan March 9, 2008 / 9:11 pm

plain,

Back to “just read Obama’s plan”, huh? Look, we’ve been over it – there’s nothing of any substance at Obama’s website…just a lot of mindless fluff designed to influence the ignorant (ie, liberals).
Rich March 9, 2008 / 9:20 pm

“March 9th 2008 Thousands of people in the southern city of Basra marched on police headquarters Saturday demanding better security for their crime-ridden city. Kidnappings, murders and thefts have risen in Iraq’s second largest city since British troops handed over responsibility for the province to Iraqi authorities.”

Nice reading comprehension. Please focus on the part that says violence has risen AFTER British troops pulled out. Now imagine what would happen with a full scale cut and run. Why the hell do we need to read Obama’s plans when he has already stated he will not follow them as President? Uggh.
hermie March 9, 2008 / 9:24 pm

Since his advisors are supposedly the closest to Obama, they should be very knowledgable aboiut his positions, since they helped formulate them.

The fact that they are are contradicting Obama’s positions and promises, demonstrates that he is like any other Chicago Dem politician: Promises everything on-camera, but makes backdoor deals and sells out his supporters at a moments’ notice.
Aaron March 9, 2008 / 9:55 pm

As Barack said, we’ve got to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.

Once you’ve driven the bus into the ditch, there are only so many ways of getting it out.

btw, what’s McCain’s plan? 100 years of occupation, at $12 billion/month (a sizable chunk going to KBR, which doesn’t pay taxes)?

Or, for that matter, what’s Bush’s plan for Iraq? Oh yeah, he never planned at all.
Freedom1 March 9, 2008 / 10:08 pm

Obama is a liar. He has a pattern of lying – on NAFTA, on Iraq, and on his childhoold:

“The not-so-simple story of Barack Obama’s youth” – The Chicago Tribune:

More than 40 interviews with former classmates, teachers, friends and neighbors in his childhood homes of Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as a review of public records, show the arc of Obama’s personal journey took him to places and situations far removed from the experience of most Americans.

At the same time, several of his oft-recited stories may not have happened in the way he has recounted them. Some seem to make Obama look better in the retelling, others appear to exaggerate his outward struggles over issues of race, or simply skim over some of the most painful, private moments of his life.

The handful of black students who attended Punahou School in Hawaii, for instance, say they struggled mightily with issues of race and racism there. But absent from those discussions, they say, was another student then known as Barry Obama.

In his best-selling autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, “Ray.” The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man.

He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. “Not even close,” he said, adding that Obama was dealing with “some inner turmoil” in those days.

“But it wasn’t a race thing,” he said. “Barry’s biggest struggles then were missing his parents. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull].”

Then there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.
Freedom1 March 9, 2008 / 10:38 pm

Matt and Mark,

For your Barack Hussein Obama file:

1) Dean Barnett describes Barack Obama’s ever-evolving positions since 2004. The “Evolving” Barack Obama – The Weekly Standard Blog

2) Clearing house of all news related to the ever-evolving Barack Obama-Tony Rezko scandal. Rezkorama – Hugh Hewitt

3) Obama And FARC – Investor’s Business Daily

Terrorism: The March 1 death strike by the Colombian army against FARC warlord Raul Reyes broke open a trove of contacts in his computer. So why did the name of Barack Obama turn up there?

Admittedly, it pales compared with other material from the dead thug’s computer — such as FARC efforts to obtain uranium or Hugo Chavez’s $300 million support. But the little Obama reference within the 15 FARC letters released by the Colombian government signals a disturbing pattern of contacts with rogue actors. It’s not the first time, and Obama has yet to distance himself. […]

Obama hasn’t said a whole lot about Colombia other than to criticize President Bush’s good relations with President Uribe. With this correspondence suggesting that FARC knows what he thinks, maybe the American voters have a right to know what he thinks, too. Five questions come to mind:

1. Is it true Obama would cut off Plan Colombia military aid to our ally, which would serve the terrorist group FARC’s interests?

2. Does Obama still oppose a free trade agreement for Colombia, even though that puts him on the same side as FARC in the debate?

3. Does Obama know or care that one of his staffers or supporters is claiming to disclose his positions in secret meetings with FARC terrorists outside government channels?

4. Can he tell us why his supporters would pass on such information to terrorists, and what he or she could gain from it?

5. Will Obama, as president, treat FARC as the serious terrorists they are, given that they still hold three Americans hostage?

These aren’t idle “gotcha” questions, by the way. Based on his campaign so far, Obama favors meeting and negotiating with rogue leaders without preconditions, passing secret messages to foreign countries at odds with his public positions and tolerating Che-flag wielding leftists among his supporters who advance a radical agenda in his name.

Now that FARC seems to have an inside line to Obama’s campaign, maybe he ought to come tell voters what he really stands for.
Joe March 10, 2008 / 8:19 am

Excuse me… after coming here this morning, I see I mis-spoke. It was FREEDOM1 that is allowed to post the most assinine things on any thread and NOT get deleted for being “off topic”.
Sunny March 10, 2008 / 3:13 pm

Freedom1 apparently the “Obama is a Muslim; Obama is a drug addict; Obama is connected with the Chicago Mob” talk didn’t work, so now its Obama is connected with FARC??? Your desperation is pitiful.
Joe March 10, 2008 / 3:16 pm

Sunny, this is the same person that continually links to radical websites claiming that Islam ultimate evil in the entire world. That all Muslims are evil.

So yes……. he will just keep lobbing things over the wall and hope he gets even one person to believe his crap. Desperation? Gee…. is it that obvious!
plainjane March 10, 2008 / 6:38 pm

35. Rich | March 9th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

We are not the policemen of the world!!!!!!!!!! If you want that to be the mission of our military; go after kidnappers and speeders then say so and provide money in the form of taxes to pay for it and proper police training, like every communty in the U.S.
Freedom1 March 11, 2008 / 8:37 pm

For the record, Islam is evil. I hate Islam. I LOVE ALL Muslims. Hate the sin (Islam), love the sinner (ALL Muslims).