politburo diktat 2.0

Karl Rove, he’s not. Whoever is in charge of McCain’s negative ad strategery: If you want to attack Obama for not visiting the troops, it’s probably not a great idea to use images of … Obama visiting the troops.

You can see in the YouTube video (~15 secs. in), that’s Obama shooting hoops with the troops in Kuwait.

YouTube - Troops

July 11 - Hot Air » ABC: Obama’s Iraq plan “almost impossible”

We can rotate troops out of Iraq on the kind of timetable Obama suggests, but we’d have to leave all of our heavy equipment in Iraq. Unless Obama plans some kind of nationwide garage sale, that would be a rather large loss for the American military in materiel as well as making our exit look more like Dunkirk.

Obviously, Obama didn’t have any awareness of logistics when he made this proposal — and that’s the point. His lack of experience, …

Wow. “Impossible .. leaving our heavy equipment in Iraq … Dunkirk.” Yikes. I particularly like the reference to Dunkirk, hearkening back to a hasty withdrawal even worse than the frequently-invoked helicopters leaving Saigon. And Obama’s 16-month proposal was evidence of his “lack of experience .. hubris” and general unfitness for command.

I am constrained by the inevitable counter-arguments to point out that there was nothing here about “conditions on the ground.” They were not mentioned. Being not mentioned, it was clearly implicit that “even if Iraqi security conditions permitted, there was a logistical problem as well.”

Now, two weeks later, McCain says 16 months looks pretty good.

July 26 - McCain Gives Qualified Endorsement to Iraq Timetable

First the Iraqi government gave Senator Barack Obama a boost by seeming to embrace his proposal for a 16-month timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. Now could Senator John McCain, who built his candidacy in large part on his opposition to such a schedule, possibly be following suit?

“I think it’s a pretty good timetable,” Mr. McCain said Friday in an interview on “The Situation Room” on CNN, before adding that it should be based “on the conditions on the ground.”

Obviously, John McCain would rather lose a war in order to win an election, since he favors a timetable that is impossible, that would require us to leave our heavy equipment behind in an ignominous rout not seen since Dunkirk, that evidenced a candidate’s inexperience and hubris. Can America afford that risk?

(I hope it’s clear here that I am not really interested in beating up on my old friend Capt. Ed, in particular, but since HotAir is one of the few rightwing blogs I read, and those guys are prolific, I can usually find the points being made generally by right wing blogs over there. The totally transparent 180 degree turn of the right in general, and McCain, in particular, is the point.)

He ventured forth to bring light to the world | Gerard Baker - Times Online

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

If you’re in the mood, check out some of the wingnut reactions at Memeorandum. What a bunch of humorless whiners. I’m sorry to inform the wingnuts that it’s just a funny piece; it doesn’t mean Obama is doomed, or peaked to early, or whatever miserably cramped spin you want to put on it. It’s funny; just have a good laugh, already.

“And, yea, the Scribes and Pharisees of Wingnuttia (pausing only to give even greater suck to those lemons permanently jammed in their mouths) scoured every scroll ever written to find something with which to slander The Child.”

Attacking your opponent for being willingly complicit in genocide, while he’s at Yad Vashem:

John McCain 2008 - Obama on Genocide

Obama today at Yad Vashem:

“Let our children come here and know this history so they can add their voices to proclaim ‘never again.’ And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us and who have become symbols of the human spirit.”

Obama on July 20, 2007:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

It doesn’t get any classier than that. Really dignified. I like the “TRUTH” and “HONOR” part.

Abusing the memory of six million Jews who died in the Holocaust to try to score a cheap political point.

Can something that happened in 2007 be the cause of something that occurred in 2006?

Hilzoy has it all on McCain’s latest confusion (or lie or stupidity or hackery):

In an interview on CBS News:

“Couric: Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?

McCain: I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlan[d] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

Let’s see this, from September 29, 2006

Presenter: Army Col. Sean B. MacFarland, commander of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division

“With respect to the violence between the Sunnis and the al Qaeda — actually, I would disagree with the assessment that the al Qaeda have the upper hand. That was true earlier this year when some of the sheikhs began to step forward and some of the insurgent groups began to fight against al Qaeda. The insurgent groups, the nationalist groups, were pretty well beaten by al Qaeda.

This is a different phenomena that’s going on right now. I think that it’s not so much the insurgent groups that are fighting al Qaeda, it’s the — well, it used to be the fence-sitters, the tribal leaders, are stepping forward and cooperating with the Iraqi security forces against al Qaeda, and it’s had a very different result.

There are many other contemporary news reports of the Anbar Awakening in late 2006. In 2008 McFarland described the events:

“On 9 September 2006 Sittar organized a tribal council, attended by over 50 sheiks and the brigade commander, at which he declared the “Anbar Awakening” officially underway. The Awakening Council that emerged from the meeting agreed to first drive AQIZ from Ramadi, and then reestablish rule of law and a local government to support the people.

The Surge started in 2007. As you can read at Hilzoy’s link up top, McFarland’s unit left Anbar about the same time as the Surge started.

Friggin’ Time Travel in McCain-o-verse. It’s a wonderful thing. The Surge defeated Nazi Germany! “That’s just a matter of history.”

Joe Klein: McCain Meltdown

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is the ninth presidential campaign I’ve covered. I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

McCain explicitly called Obama a traitor; he is a disgrace.

I just got this email from the McCain campaign:

McCain Team -

It’s pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it’s a love affair. We want you to be the judge. We’ve compiled two videos of the more outrageous moments of this not so secret love affair. Follow this link to watch the two videos and vote on which one you think is better. Your vote will determine which video we put on the air.

The media is in love with Barack Obama. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny.

Regards,

The McCain Campaign

It’s so childish and whiney, I’d almost suspect it’s a spoof or a set-up. And coming from McCain, whose relationship with the media is so cozy, he once called them his “base.”

Who was the genius at the RNC who suggested, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to go after Obama for not visiting Iraq?”

But the cart is mis-labelled. It should read “Property of #43.”

I know John Cole doesn’t like the ‘old’ stuff, but sheeshh. McCain and Bush 41, rolling off into the sunset
in their golf cart. Like “The Political Bucket List.”

If he meant the “Iran-Pakistan” border, I wouldn’t have bothered to linked it.

But he’s talking about the “Afghanistan-Pakistan” border.

The American Spectator - Obama’s Tank Ride

Barack Obama’s handlers had obviously wanted the candidate’s appearance in Germany to invoke comparisons to presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Yet their original choice of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate — venue of Reagan’s historic 1987 “tear down this wall” speech — was rejected by Germans who noted that Obama is merely a candidate, rather than an actual president, and objected to the Democrat’s appropriation of their symbol of national unity for a political campaign event.

Foiled in their original quest for an iconic backdrop, Team Obama accepted as an alternative speech location the plaza adjoining the Siegessaule (”Victory Column”) about a mile west of the Brandenburg Gate. Alas for the apostles of Hope, the symbolism of this site has proven “problematic,” as a spokesman for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats told Der Spiegel.
…
In the worst-case scenario — a gaffe or blunder that exposes the Democrat to criticism or ridicule — this overseas odyssey could go down in history as Obama’s equivalent of that fateful 1988 tank ride by Michael Dukakis.

While Obama has far more charm than Dukakis, what made the image of Dukakis in that tank so potent was that it showed the Democrat straining to seem what he so obviously was not — a credible candidate for Commander-in-Chief. It was the transparent phoniness of the gesture that hurt.

They want their tank ride, and they want it now! Must have TANK RIDE!!! TANK RIDE!!! .. We wantssssss it, yes, my Preciousssssssssss …. Tank Ride.

Iraq official says US troops could leave by 2010

Iraq’s government spokesman is hopeful that U.S. combat forces could be out of the country by 2010.

Ali al-Dabbagh made the comments following a meeting in Baghdad on Monday between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who arrived in Iraq earlier in the day.

July 2008 + 16 months = November 2009. Looks like Obama was wrong again.

Comment Stings Maliki as Obama Arrives in Baghdad - NYTimes.com

Last time we checked, a particularly humorous, and vaque denial was being touted by the right wing bloggers:

“Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone [from inside the American Embassy]. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.” [in a statement distributed by the U.S. military]

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”

He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”

Photo from Barack Obama - Yahoo! News Photos¹

I do not think that the troops hate Obama. And I am certainly not displaying this image to claim that they all support him.

Rather, this post is in the manner of a prediction. Here goes …

Over the next week Obama will be photographed about 10,000 times, many times with U.S. troops. Should even one of those photos show any service members with anything less than adulation on their faces, I predict the usual suspects will be howling, “See, see, see … The troops hate Obama. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.” If we are very unlucky, we will be treated to another tiresome excerpt of Col. Nathan R. Jessup’s tirade along with it.

I give them three days.

And, if no such actual photograph emerges, and they have to resort to Photoshopping, then it might take them a week.

Update: So, as soon as I wrote this post, I fired up Google Blog Search to see what i could find. To my dismay, it was worse than i thought. Read what the “not racists” at Power Line Forum have to offer:

Power Line Forum | Video: Obama Visits BLACK Troops in Kuwait²

Power Line Forum | Don’t white troops support Obama?

1. I don’t know if that’s a permanent link. [↩]
2. Their caps, not mine. [↩]

Ben Smith’s Blog: Political News about Democrats and the 2008 Election - Politico.com

So while there’s been some suggestion that Maliki was playing domestic politics, this seems like the opposite. (Who plays domestic politics in the pages of Spiegel?) Maliki is playing international politics, American politics even. While some may object to that, it may be a sign that he intends to be a player in the American election from now until November, and realizes how much more leverage he has now on the next president’s stance toward his country than he will after our election.

Too many ins and outs. Everyone is gonna get way, way in the weeds, and pick out what they want.

Me? I must point out that the correction or clarification released through CENTCOM by Ahmed Chalabi’s buddy, Dabbagh, struck me as the most humorous aspect of this whole business. “Humorous,” not necessarily “of zero credibility.” But couldn’t they have done better? I wonder what time it was in Iraq when they trundled Dabbagh down to the CENTCOM press office. I envision the middle of the night, but I don’t really know.

At any rate, in all fairness, in a kerfuffle that is cloudy at best, Ben’s take seems the best that anyone can draw: Maliki’s comments were meant for U.S. domestic (i.e. political and electoral) consumption.

While the obvious take would be that he favors Obama, I really don’t know. Further, if Ben’s analysis is correct, even if Maliki was trying to help out McCain, by some less obvious path, would it matter much.

Update: As I read more, and a couple more stories appeared today, I want to revise my thoughts. First, it’s becoming quite clear that Maliki is trying to 1) play in U.S. elections, and/or 2) gain concessions from the Bush administration. (See this AP story.) Second, the “denials” are pretty weak. (See Yglesias.) The main point of my revision is that I think this story, i.e. Maliki’s statement, does have meaning. Also, I recommend my readers take the “Aha, see, he didn’t mean it” with a grain of salt. I’m not in the mood to link & argue all the details, but anyone who wants can follow them from easily.