Do I have to remind you again that the surge was not the only factor in the reduction of violence?

Um right, which is why Obama’s plan also includes this, as previously quoted:

…a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

Also, Obama has said that his 16 month timeline will be done “responsibly” in consultation with our generals and the Iraqi government. How is this not a reasonable position to take?

douchebage Marxist.

Wow… never been called a douchebage before, ‘your’ clearly a genius.

Just to be clear then, your saying that the donations by reporters are not simply suggestive of bias but positively dictate it? That a media outlet which gives P more money to the Obama campaign is going to slant the news P in his direction? You’re suggesting a direct correlation here, and I want to make sure I understand the ratio. As mentioned, Fox News has given nothing to the RNC, does that mean they slant 0 left? “Liberal” MSNBC has given more to republicans than they have democrats, does that mean their reporting must logically favor McCain over Obama? I’m trying to understand your clearly well-thought-out theory here of how personal preference dictates professional behavior, and an struggling due to how much um… uh… derrr… common sense I lack, so could you just elaborate a bit? How do you account for FNC and MSNBC, to say nothing of all the McCain whitewashing (the CBS thing f’rinstance) within the context of your great “Grand Unified Field Theory of Librull Medeaa!!!1!”?

Because McCain also says:

The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

His withdrawal timeline, as clearly supported by al-Maliki,

Nonsense. It is not “clearly support” by al-Maliki as Maliki himself said, “Assuming that positive developments continue.”

This has been Obama’s plan and position since the beginning of the campaign.

Yeah, that all assumes the “campaign” began several months ago while his viewpoint has changed substantially over the last several years.

If anyone has changed his position it’s McCain

Total bullshit.

“the difficult part of making the full political transition of power and continuing to sustain the counterinsurgency that is taking place.”

Yeah. Something that never would have been possible without the surge that Obama says he STILL would have opposed.

“I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.”

Please explain how that jibes with your statement that McCain believes the war is “essentially won.”

At the same time, Obama is clearly focussed on “the difficult part of making the full political transition of power and continuing to sustain the counterinsurgency that is taking place.”

His withdrawal timeline, as clearly supported by al-Maliki, is, as Obama has said, based on the recognition that reducing the US presence is essential to stabilizing the political situation in Iraq. Obama goes on, however, to say that:

a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

This has been Obama’s plan and position since the beginning of the campaign. If anyone has changed his position it’s McCain, although I don’t think McCain believes “the war is essentially won.” He certainly doesn’t say anything like that in his rebuttal.

Dude, do you pull these conclusions out of your ass?

That’s kinda um……uh……common sense maybe?

Evidently that bypassed you.

Your welcome.

douchebage Marxist.

So McCain now favors a withdrawal date of 2013 because the war is essentially won but Obama’s 16 month withdrawal window is retreat and defeat. Jay, that makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

I was being sarcastic. Get a grip.

If McCain said he expects to be bringing troops home in 2013 he should have some reason for why he is expecting it. Wouldn’t you agree? He doesn’t offer any reasons in his piece

Yes he does. And I’m not cutting and pasting anymore. Read the fucking thing. His expectations are based on the fact that the war is essentially won (something probably differs from the editors at the NY Times who essentially declared the war lost in 2007). Now comes the difficult part of making the full political transition of power and continuing to sustain the counterinsurgency that is taking place.

Contrast that with Obama, whose position on when the troops should come home has differed with changing positions on the ground. In February of 2007, he said he wanted to have troops home by March of 2008, not because we were winning but because the situation was supposedly hopeless. In May of 2007, he changed up once again and declared the troops should be brought home “immediately.” Why isn’t Obama asked to explain this constant shifting on his part? McCain has been consistent from day one on this.

Now you can argue that the Iraqis are exaggerating or lying for their own domestic political reasons if you want, but given the other demands listed and the larger rhetoric about Iraq from Bush and McCain, I don’t see a reason to disbelieve the Iraqis.

There’s plenty of reason to disbelieve them as you yourself pointed out. Bush has repeatedly said he doesn’t want to establish permanent bases, so I until I see something concrete to the contrary, your assertion that’s what he wants cannot be accepted.

I cannot understand the rationale that people think it is reasonable to say, “Tell us what day the war is going to be over.”

Agreed. Further, I cannot understand such people who then give such a date, and then get in a snit when asked what they base that date on.

You say he clarifies his point but to me, foolish benighted imbecile that I must surely be, he just seems to confuse it further. “Expect them home by January 2013, but understand you have no right to expect that?” “You can’t trust people who make arbitrary deadlines, such as the one I’m making right now?” “My predicted date, which I should not be predicting, will be within my first term, but so what if it isn’t?” “The Time table I didn’t make ends by…”

Honestly, this would be a different situation if he said “I would hope situations on the ground within the first term improved such that they could return home” but he doesn’t. It’s not a blind hope, its an expectation. I feel, and evidently the Osama Bin NYTimes (just beating mccann to the oh so witty punch there) agrees. McCain wants to talk about bringing them back, bitch about Obama doing the same, but can’t offer any elaboration on what he basis his disagreement on beyond the confusing “Obama’s wrong to do what I rightly did just now.”

The world’s most popular false analogy. WWII was a classic war of control-territory and take-the-capital, for the most part major powers engaging each other’s conventional militaries, whereas this is a guerrilla war that has much more in common with Vietnam or France’s Algeria experience than with World War II. The conventional part – Saddam’s army vs. ours – ended basically way back when Bush did his ‘mission accomplished’ speech.

As the insurgency probably will not be ‘over’ when we leave, it makes sense that we have some leeway as to when we leave.

Here’s a link to one of the many stories written about this:

“BAGHDAD, June 10 — High-level negotiations over the future role of the U.S. military in Iraq have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate, with Iraqi politicians denouncing what they say are U.S. demands to maintain nearly 60 bases in their country indefinitely …

In a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Satterfield repeated several times that the U.S. goal is to create a more independent Iraq. “We want to see Iraqi sovereignty strengthened, not weakened,” he said.

Abadi and other Iraqi officials said that assertion is undercut by the U.S. request to maintain 58 long-term bases in Iraq. The Americans originally pushed for more than 200 facilities across the country, according to Hadi al-Amiri, a powerful lawmaker who is the head of the Badr Organization, the former armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the country’s largest Shiite political party.

Iraqi officials said the U.S. government also demanded the continuation of several current policies: authority to detain and hold Iraqis without turning them over to the Iraqi judicial system, immunity from Iraqi prosecution for both U.S. troops and private contractors, and the prerogative for U.S. forces to conduct operations without approval from the Iraqi government.

The American negotiators also called for continued control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, according to Askari, positions he said added to concerns that the United States was preparing to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061003415.html?nav=rss_email/components&sid=ST200806110105

Now you can argue that the Iraqis are exaggerating or lying for their own domestic political reasons if you want, but given the other demands listed and the larger rhetoric about Iraq from Bush and McCain, I don’t see a reason to disbelieve the Iraqis.

Jay, do try not to be so infantile. If McCain said he expects to be bringing troops home in 2013 he should have some reason for why he is expecting it. Wouldn’t you agree? He doesn’t offer any reasons in his piece but he does attack Obama for suggesting that he expects to be bringing troops home in 16 months.

Now Obama’s website includes this:

The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Clearly Obama is not going to arbitrarily remove troops if military commanders and Iraqis say the withdrawals have to stop because of conditions on the ground. That’s what “responsible” means to me.

So why is McCain opposed to withdrawing troops by 2010 but expecting to do the same thing by 2013? Expectation suggests he has reason to believe now that this is possible.

He doesn’t need a crystal ball to explain the basis of his own expectations does he?

Just to focus on the timetable thing, maybe the NY Times thought it was somewhat newsworthy that McCain actually offered a specific year that he expected to be bringing troops home. McCain wrote:

I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013. But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

But what “realistic assessment of conditions on the ground” now leads McCain to expect to welcome home troops in 2013? What about Iraq now makes withdrawing troops in 2013 victory and in 16 months defeat? What about Iraq now makes expecting to bring the troops home in 2013 not a timetable and expecting to bring the troops home in 16 months a timetable?

What if leaders in 1944 said, ‘We’re going to end the war in the pacific on August 1, 1945.’”

But isn’t this exactly what McCain wrote? He expects to bring troops home by 2013.

Now if you’d like to explain some of these inconsistencies, be my guest, but they are indeed inconsistencies and the Times was asking for more specifics about the plan. As I suggested, I think the Times was being very diplomatic about their wording. They could have just said, “Hey, this doesn’t make any sense. Please re-write it to explain your inconsistencies.”

Your guy must really suck.

You’re right! McCain should just take out his crystal ball, learn what is going to happen during that time – specifically – and then write it down!

But seriously, McCain actually does clarify his point in the next paragraph (and this further fuels my suspicions that some people haven’t even read it):

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

What if leaders in 1944 said, “We’re going to end the war in the pacific on August 1, 1945.” Would that have made any sense? I cannot understand the rationale that people think it is reasonable to say, “Tell us what day the war is going to be over.”

And I could point out a few problems with reading the editorial which, predictably, you gloss over instantaneously, such as the simple fact that the conventions havent even happened yet, when of course a great deal of money is going to be raised, the pecularity that Fox News hasn’t given any money to republicans but “liberal” MSNBC has given more to republicans than democrats, no mention at all of the simple fact that democrats have done a better job of fundraising this election than the republicans have generally, the whole conspiracy theory angle in the middle about MSNBC reporting on this fact so we would all ignore it because they’re INSIDE OUR MINDS, MAN, and oh sweetened fanciful moses-flavored paste do I just love the ending bit: “When we lower one of these numbers by 86% and fail to give any reason for doing so, it compares even less favorably to this other number!” Oh my what brilliant statistical foresight the author truly has. “When we make up a different number, we see its different! OogaBooga!”

But it would all be ultimately futile because, y’know, yeah. Newspeople give more money to democrats than republicans. Now, your job is to explain why the everlasting fuck is that relevant? Why does that suggest unfairness professionally, particularly in the face of… well everything mentioned in this thread? McCain’s Press BBQ, editing the interview recently to remove the mistake he made, the glossing over Hagee at the same time we obsess over Wright, “Terrorist Fist-Jab,” etc. How are all these apparent demonstrations of bias in one direction irrelevant in the face of a statistical point that suggests, not demonstrates, the bias goes the other way?

Of course we can expect naught but the finest snark from you as you reply by simply calling me crazy, and truly I must be for expecting anything more by way of an answer from you.

So forgetting that douchebag, um, Jay? You were saying the NYT’s crime was basically forcing McCain to adopt a policy (timetables) that he doesn’t endorse before publishing his rebuttal. Then you quote it as giving the date of 2013 as when he “expect[s] to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq” in the face of his opposition to setting dates. Does this not require a bit more clarification on McCain’s part? Given how we’ve already been handed arbitrary “timetables” in this war (”six days, six weeks, I doubt six months” jumps unbidden to mind) that have all turned out all to be holy fuck wrong, is the NY times really that in the wrong to read a date like that and ask what McCain thinks might happen between now and then? Some sort of, oh call me crazy, Table of things that would happen over Time?

Seriously….you don’t HONESTLY think the media generally favors conservatives, do you??? LMAO!

And I gotta bridge to sell ya too.

I mentioned two categories that commenters on this site fall into. You sir, fall into the first one and live in a fantasy world.