From Gateway Pundit:
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.
Blogs For Victory 
Obama lied. More people will die! Obama is selling out to big oil, Halliburton and Exxon so he and Rezko can acquire more wealth.
Impeach Obama. He just wants the oil.
omarkma
the spacejunkies agree with your assessment
the audacity of hope sounds like a focus group title
do you think frank luntz facilitated this group?
isn’t he the guy…that compiles “a lot of words”
that are relevant to human voters?
i think now…the word ‘hypocritical’ would apply?
please help us out….expound
cuz as usual……we’re bewildered?
This is the essence of Obama: He has no real principles or policy, but he makes pretty speeches that make women faint and reporters gush about how wonderful he is.
He runs on a promise of pulling out the troops, but then privately says he doesn’t know what he’ll do when he becomes President. He’ll have to know what the situation is. Didn’t the all-knowing Obama say he was right about Iraq, and he didn’t even need intelligence reports, committee briefings or rely on those Generals who according to Democrats, can’t be believed?
Why doesn’t anyone ask: If this guy is a ‘reformer’, why did he go along with the corruption in Chicago and Springfield? Where was he in the fight against political corruption? Where was his ‘leadership’ where leadership was needed most?
Illinois finances are in horrific shape. As a member of the state Senate, Obama contributed to this mess. Where was his ‘leadership’ regarding the crisis of state pension funds? It’s still not resolved. Where was his ‘leadership’ when it came to the state budget?
Obama was just another good soldier in Springfield, who happened to be in the good graces of the party bosses. He ingratiated himself with these bosses and people like Tony Rezko, and he was rewarded with the US Senate seat.
Obama has spent most of his Senate term either running for President or hawking his books. Nothing indicates that this man is serious about actually fighting corruption or easing the burden on taxpayers.
He is another tax and spend liberal whose biggest weapon is his charisma. It’s too bad that those who have contributed to his campaign or swooned over his pretty speeches, haven’t taken the time to look at what he says versus what he has done.
Of all current and former candidates in the 2008 presidential election Ron Paul has the best plan to fix the Cheney/Bush disaster in Iraq.
McCain’s entire staff is made from lobbyists and he openly claimed he thinks Americans are okay with the idea of our brave men and women staying in Iraq for a thousand years.
I take a chance on Obama.
Have you no sense of irony at all Mark? You have been one of the foremost boosters of President Bush for the last 7+ years, you have cheered his every move as he and his morally and intellectually handicapped advisers developed and then executed their plans for the Iraq war. To say that those plans, and the execution therof, were a disaster understates the case by several orders of magnitude. And now you have the gall to complain about Obama’s war planning? Wake up, Mark! Whatever Obama’s plan is or might be it could hardly be worse than what your man Bush has done for us during his tenure. Keep in mind that the latest estimates of the full accounting for the war now run to $3 trillion, that’s $30,000 for each American family including yours. And the world is a much more dangerous place after all the wasted spending and lives GWB made on our behalf.
One can easily see the development of your strategy to pin the whole sorry enterprise on the next occupant of the White House thereby absolving your guy Bush of his responsibility for the disastrous consequences. But thankfully people (including you, I suspect) know the truth; your overzealous re-writing of history will do nothing to change it. Before you can be honest with other people, Mark, you first need to be honest with yourself. Forget the silly over-the-top partisanship for a minute and take a look in the mirror. Be honest with yourself!
Have a great day!
Phil
Bagni,
There is a growing body of thought that Obama is actually a Rovian plant to ensure that Halliburton comes out on top, come what may…so, I guess it is possible that GOPer Luntz (a long-known tool of the Cheney/Rove/Halliburton/Vermont Teddy Bear cabal) was involved…
Phil,
One of the funniest things I saw in that stroll through the bookstore was a new book about Iraq – can’t remember the exact title, but it was something along the lines of “Defeat: How America and Britain Lost Iraq”…meanwhile, we’re marching from victory to victory in Iraq…I guess, though, there is a market for such a book…you, after all, are still convinced that Iraq is a disaster…
Mark,
The audience that that book enjoys are people like Phil. Void of any reasonable, critical thought instead only reacting slavishly to the propaganda du jour.
Have a great day!
JD,
While your baseless assertions played well in 2006, it is now 2008 and you have obviously missed the last several DNC talking point memos. Please try and keep up with current events and/or at the very least request a new DNC mentor. Your current one has failed you miserably.
tHEY WiLl SaY aNy ThiNG yOU wANT tO HEar To WIn.
Well, I was with you in the first part of your post there, but then you took a right turn and went off on the title of his book like you thought you were still scoring points on that sillness. And then you took another turn to close mumbling about his lack of experience. And you ended with “a lot of words…That is all.” Which left me thinking, suddenly he’s not talking about Obama anymore, but he’s talking about himself!
I’d stick to the attack on Obama’s Iraq plan. It concerns even many of us Democrats.
Thanks for letting me have my say on your site.
Most of the lefty comments again attack president Bush and what has happened in the past, even through their distorted lenses, but do not address the fact the Obama is clueless when it comes to what he will REALLY do if he wins the presidency. (which just happens to be the topic) He also dwells in the past making much of his vote against the war in Iraq even though he lost that vote. Meantime he blames Hillary for voting for the war. All he talks is “woulda, coulda, and shoulda…”
Good grief, people, isn’t there at least one American left who has the capability of leadership? Anyone at all in the whole U.S. of A. who can bring some semblance of unity, some hope, some positivity back into the political arena?
For a country who claims to be a world leader in just about everything, y’all are near the bottom of the class when it comes to the democratic election process.
http://icasualties.org/oif/
Nine days into the month and we only have one American soldier dead from combat and one from an accident. Meanwhile five high school students were shot dead in various incidents in Chicago just this week. Do you libs really think things are going so badly for us still? Is it more dangerous to be a Chicago student than a marine in Iraq now? If so, surely you must give the surge some credit? These are the facts.
Explain how Iraq is worth the fanatical ideology expressed here by paraniod, uneducated and xeonophobic cretins. Those to whom delusion is reality and reality a source of scorn. All this talk about Obama’s lack of a “real “plan is a joke. Explain the plan of gwb. Ra dares you.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080309/D8VA528G1.html
markrovian;
thanks for the tip on rove and obama
the spock posse has probably been too obsessed
with the mc’churian candidate theory we’ve been investigating
we hadn’t heard about the rovebama link yet…
we’ll do some orbital observation around it
ack ack
Deleted – off topic; the topic is Obama’s lack of an Iraq plan, not the Democrats’ ability to trot out a soldier who will condemn McCain. This thread is about Obama, Obama, Obama and his lack of plan. Stick to the subject at hand.
Former or dumb Marine. You choose.
Why stop at Clinton? How about Bush Sr and his Secretary of Defense Cheney not marching into Baghdad in 1991? Or Reagan with his Iran Contra problems? Or Rumsfled making deals with Sadam? Or Eisenhower? Or the English who created Iraq and then lost the equivilent of 800,000 men before they gave up?
Your problem; and that of others, is that you will not, under any circumstances give credit to the faliure of the gwb administration where it is surely due and that is at the doorstep of the encepheletic idiot who has hijacked our country and our constitution. And he has done this diservice all in the name of equating paranoia with patriotisim, fear with national security and propogating a myth in order to secure a natural resource that enriches his supporters.
What plan did gwb have in mind to encact after we invaded? Obama might not be alot of things, but he has ignited a movement and his eloquence makes up for alot. gwb can’t put 2 words together in a coeherent sentence and when he does speak, he contradicts himself. As a Marine, you should be outraged that your leader has led your country in the same way as another George (Armstrong Custer) led his men to their demise at Little Bighorn.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) 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.
Average Republicans re-read the first sentence again and again and again until it makes sense to you. Hannity and Limbaugh loving Necons forget it this will never make sense, for you are into nation building.
The Obama and Clinton plans are similar in that they are much the same as this British plan in Basara. Get the hell out of the way and the people of Iraq will rise to take care of the Al Queda and other thugs that followed us to Iraq in hopes of shooting Americans in a barrel. McCain’s 100-year war plan of simply passing our intrusion in the Iraqi civil war is no plan.
pla9injane – no, YOU read it again and think about it.
“since British troops handed over responsibility for the province to Iraqi authorities.”
But don’t worry. Obama will pull out immediately. or if you don’t like that – don’t worry he’s lying. Whichever you want.
You already voted in Congress to get us out. How’d that work out for you?
Kahn, Jane just wants you to read only the 1st sentence and assume things are going badly. Typical of progressive fact finders. So Jane, read the 2nd sentence, over and over again–and there is the result of the Dem plan to pull our troops out.
Progressives have selective reading ability, just ignore the facts, and read the headlines only of the NYT.
plain,
But Obama doesn’t have a plan – he says he’ll pull out, his advisors say he might not…he’s just jumping ’round saying what he thinks you want to hear…and, it works like a charm because you refuse to think.