Tag: obama

I have been doing a bit of digging about the recent article on Obama having tried to interfere with troop withdrawal in Iraq in order to make it look like the old Iraq policy has failed, and once he got into power, his supposedly new one would have succeeded.

I am trying to get some sense if it is another complete pack of lies like they have been doing to Palin, or if there is some truth in it.

There seems to be a fair amount of truth in it from the fact that officials are willing to put their names to it.

This is the original editorial in his usual Op-Ed column:.

OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS’ IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09152008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obama_tried_to_stall_gis_iraq_withdrawal_129150.htm?&page=0

So it is an opinion piece by Amir Taheri, not a news article.

Some argue that Tahiri is noted for his lies, http://irancoverage.com/2007/11/21/the-lies-of-amir-taheri/

And I have to say I was very worried when I saw one of the items:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/cohleresses
Elena Benador, PR agent for Taheri (as well as Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie, Richard Perle, and James Woolsey) defended Taheri. Benador explained that, when it comes to Iran, accuracy is “a luxury…As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s wrong is siding with the terrorists.”

Translation=”It is okay to lie about Iran.”

I am sorry, but TRUTH and ACCURACY are important and essential, not a luxury.

The post is a right-wing paper by comparison with the others in New York City.

Having said that, in his op-ed article he states:

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

So at the same time that the source is suspect, Zebari is actually willling to put his name to the story, not siphon it through the usual ‘anonymous source’ cloak.

Journalists need to interview Zebari in more depth.

Pajamas Media is trying to sniff out more information:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-questionable-diplomacy-in-iraq/2/

and has a response from McCain’s camp. As of their writing, Obama’s camp refused to comment. Which could be telling in itself,”lack of outrage, much?

Here is the other coverage:
Wake up America

http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2008/09/obama-tried-to-interfere-with-iraq.html

and hot air links
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/15/did-obama-try-to-scotch-an-iraqi-us-agreement-on-military-forces/

also wizbang

http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/09/15/during-his-july-tour-of-iraq-obama-tried-to-undermine-negotiations-between-the-us-and-iraq-for-troop-drawdown.php

They are all pretty similar but the first one is the most detailed to date.

One has to be worried on the one hand, because it was the left bloggers who started the whole stream of lies about Palin. They would just be returning the favor.

But if we look at a reliable source on Obama’s trip in July, Reuters, this is the original Reuters coverage:
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GCA-iraq/idUSL0236543520080721?sp=true

It says that Bush had already agreed to troop withdrawal the week prior, and the Iraqis were trying to pin down a more firm date.

It is fully possible, in the effort to paint Iraq a failure, that Obama might have tried to interfere with that on the grounds of gaining more power. But as the Iraqis had said to him at the time, it would have to be on THEIR timetable more than the US’s for the sake of all concerned.

That is, the Iraqis would have to be ready.

Obama met with Petraeus while he was over there, but Petraeus has now gone, so one has to wonder what diplomatic and intellligence connections Obama has had in the past, and has at present in the region.

McCain has been there 8 times, Obama only once previously, in Jan 2006. Where has Obama been getting his intel from? Who his sources and contacts are?

We should be hearing more about this if people start to winkle out the truth more one way or the other.

On the other hand, why is it not causing a feeding frenzy? I am getting ‘the politics of fashion’ on how Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin and H Clinton are affecting women’s fashions, for pity’s sake.

I also looked at the timeline–

New Yorker Magazine published this:
Obama’s Iraq Problem

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/07/07/080707taco_talk_packer

A week later:
Obama: My Plan for Iraq

and of course he went to Iraq as soon as McCain poked at his (in)experience.

Even if the op ed piece in the Post is not true at all, the article by Obama and trip to Iraq speaks to his motives in what he is doing, literally anything to get elected. = “I’m not flip flopping, you’re the ones who got it wrong.”

I’m afraid it is looking more and more like the DNC got it wrong. They refused to seat all the Florida and Michigan delegates, which would have put H Clinton over the required number.

And Obama got it wrong, ignoring 18 million people who voted for H Clinton, and choosing Biden as VP.

As a follow up, Taheri stands by his assertions, and is now getting death threats:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09172008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obama_objects_129453.htm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_el_pr/obama
What does this say about him that on the one hand he acts so smugly self-confident, and on the other he is literally doing or saying whatever he wants in order to get elected.

Obama’s new ‘proposal’ includes two significant reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had steadfastly fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation’s emergency oil stockpile to relieve pump prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.

Not only did Obama push for drawing from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he also reiterated his changing position on offshore drilling “” first revealed last Friday “” suggesting that he could live with it if done in an environmentally sound way and as part of a bipartisan energy compromise.

Once the got the nomination, he completely changed his tune and while I would not go so far as to say not to vote for him, since anything has to be better than yet another Republican, just keep in mind we need to hold him accountable so we do not end up with an even worse president than Bush.

Now it is him supporting the government’s surveillance bill despite the fact that he said he would oppose it.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/11/obama.netroots/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Every day we have more and more evidence of his inability to stick to any sort of policy or principle.

But best of all, rather than declarifying or even defending his position, he then attacks the conservatives on THEIR record, even though he is voting with them, and saying “No, you’ve misunderstood. You’re the ones who have got it all wrong.”

I hate to say it, but the Democratic Party got it all wrong. Instead of listening to the will of the people in Florida and Michigan, they abandoned their democratic principles and refused to give Hillary Clinton her full delegate count, which would have easily put her over the number of delegates required to secure the nomination.

How is this any different from what the Republicans did to Gore in 2000? And look at the price we have been paying for it ever since.

What price are we going to pay for riding roughshod over democratic principles once again, when here is a man who has not even got anywhere near the Presidency yet, and is doing more about-faces than a platoon of soldiers on drill.

Hillary, you should have taken it to the Party to decide because as anyone could have told you, his inexperience and hypocrisy and lack of brains compared with you are plain for all to see.

 

Obama has once again tried to convince people that all is rosy now that he is a presidential candidate. He is telling the American people we are going through short-term economic pain. And that another round of stimulus checks will solve it.

 

Dude, what ARE you smoking?

 

Cos the rest of us are looking at the real world:

 

Oil at over $140 a barrel and climbing, with production cut in Nigeria and now in Libya, food prices up over 10% just since the beginning of the year, so that it actually makes more sense to stock up on groceries than put cash in a savings account,  the stock market plunging hundreds of points every day last week.

 

Once again, you have proven you are out of touch with reality, and your smugness is detestable, because you are offering no real solutions to the millions of Americans you are trying to con.  And the more you feed people this bull, the less change will come about. We need an experienced politician with the ability to balance the books-you are right, we DO need the Clintons. FAST.

 

Yahoo news

Here is a good article on Obama vs Wright situation.

 

As the writer from the Washington Post says in this op-ed piece, we can see his ‘true colors’ at last, and his so-called important race speech everyone touted as being the greatest thing since Lincoln, has been exposed as the empty sham of a few good speech writers.

 

Obama, you were so close to Wright that to disown him would be to disown your WHITE grandmother? Why not ANY of your grandmothers? You are as tainted by racism as the people you’ve attacked for being racist!

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050102900.html