Bent Corner

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain spoke yesterday on a litany of topics including Iraq and Afghanistan. He tried to point out where he and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama differed on on Iraq, mainly on the so-called “surge”. From Real Clear Politics:

Where Senator Obama and I disagreed, fundamentally, was what course we should take. I called for a comprehensive new strategy — a surge of troops and counterinsurgency to win the war. Senator Obama disagreed. He opposed the surge, predicted it would increase sectarian violence, and called for our troops to retreat as quickly as possible.

The problem with McCain’s comment is that although what he said was “technically” correct, the Obama campaign had already retroactively removed all proof that he opposed the surge from his website.

That means it never happened. 

It’s clear that McCain is grossly out of touch when it comes to politics of the 21st century. McCain should know that before critisizing Obama on an issue, he should first refer to the official Obama website or his MySpace page to see if the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee still holds that perticular stance on the issue.  He very well may have flip-flopped refined his position, like he did on FISA and or Federal campaign finance. 

John McCain is now left with egg on his face.  I don’t really know what that saying means.  I only know that it’s not very good.

I feel as though liberals are quickly running out of reasons to vote for Barack Obama.  He seems to be flip-flopping on one issue after another in an attempt to appear more to the so called “middle America”.  Not that I even really know what that exactly is.

First he backed away from the rock solid 16-month time table for pulling out of Iraq by saying that he was holding on to the right to “revise” (flip-flop) his Iraq plan if he received new information from commanders on the ground.  He then “revised” his promise to oppose giving retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies by stating that he would vote for a bill that did just that.

When he caved on Iraq and then FISA, I figured the only thing that was left was the idea that liberals had to vote for Obama, or McCain would stack the Supreme Court with judges that would take away a woman’s right to an abortion.

Now I’m not even sure of that.

Via TalkLeft, quoting the AP:

In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

Not only does is sound as though Obama doesn’t respect a woman’s right to choose, it sounds like he doesn’t respect the seriousness of mental illness.  Both physical illness and mental illness are very serious issues.  Nether should be taken any less serious then the other.

To put this into context, it seems that Obama would not allow Andrea Yates, the Texas woman that drowned her five children to recieve a late-term abortion.  That’s a position I would expect John McCain to have.

Barack Obama has made the issue of pulling out of Iraq his signature issue.  It turns out that his get-out-of-Iraq-in-16-months policy is not as rock solid as he has made it seem.  Obama said today while speaking to a veterans group that when he goes to Iraq and speaks to commanders on the ground, he just might learn things that might cause him to “refine” his plan.  From the AP (via Yahoo!):

He said what he learns from military commanders on his upcoming trip to Iraq will refine his policy but “not the 16-month timetable” for withdrawing U.S. troops from combat in Iraq. He said what he learns could affect how many residual troops might be needed to train the Iraqi army and police.

So what exactly will there be to refine?  Either he completely pulls every combat brigade currently in Iraq out within 16 months of taking office or he doesn’t.

As much as I hate absolutes, it’s kind of an either-or type of thing.  He has backed himself in a corner with the 16-month time table.  There’s not an awful lot of wiggle room when it comes to pulling out of Iraq.  Either he does it in 16 months or he doesn’t.

He caved on his pledge to participate in federal campaign financing.  He caved on not giving the telcos retroactive immunity.  If he caves on pulling the troops out of Iraq within 16 months, he had better do it after the Democratic National Convention next month.  If he does it before, a few of the so-called “committed” superdelegates just may throw their votes to Hillary Clinton, making her not the presumptive nominee, but the actual nominee.

I’m starting to think that when Obama talks about Change™, he is refering to his ability to say one thing and then do something completely different.  I think he got away with it with campaign finance and FISA.  I don’t think he will be as lucky when it comes to getting out of Iraq.

Not only will Barack Obama be the first presidential candidate since Watergate to bypass public financing, he is reneging on an earlier promise to participate in public financing during the general election.

The McCain campaign has already jumped on this by posting a time-line chronicling Obama’s support for public financing and his subsequent reversal.

Obama seems to have a real problem with telling the truth. He repeatedly says one thing and then does another when it behooves him. He signed an oath to not campaign in the state of Florida, but then purchased national TV spots that ran in Florida. He also said that he could no more disown Rev. Wright than he could disown the black community. A month latter he did just that.

When Obama is elected this November and then promptly reverses himself on his pledge to remove the troops from Iraq, no one should act suprised. Saying one thing and then doing another is what Obama does.

You can bank on it.

If you’ve been out on the links and haven’t seen George W. Bush whacking the ball, it’s not because you and him always have different tee times. It’s because he has decided to acknowledge the sacrifice made by U.S. service members in Iraq by not playing golf anymore.

From Politico:

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

What I find interesting is that he didn’t decide to stop playing golf because of the death of an American service member, but because of the death of a United Nations official. Curious.

I wonder, has he ever thought of acknowledging their sacrifice by stop sending them to Iraq?

I stopped playing golf years ago. Not because I wanted to acknowledge anyone’s sacrifice. I quit because I realized golf really sucks.

I’m not really sure why people are still protesting the Iraq war. I think it clear that this point the Bush administration doesn’t care what we think about their war. When Vice-President Dick Cheney was asked about recent polls that show two-thirds of Americans say the fight in Iraq is not worth it, Cheney replied, “So?”

They don’t care.

I think protesting a group or an entity that incorporates constant public polling — such as the Bush administration — is a complete waste of time. They already know what people think.

From the AP:

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the “burn” rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

This helps put some prospective on John McCain’s view that we will be in Iraq for the next 100 years. It’s starting to add up to some real money.

The book is called The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict and it’s on Amazon for $15.61.

From the AP:

An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be “dancing in the streets” if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.

Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama’s pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.

“The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror,” King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.

“His middle name does matter,” King said. “It matters because they read a meaning into that.”

So he thinks that al-Qaida will take to the streets in uncontrollable dancing if Barack Obama becomes president. Wouldn’t it then be a whole lot easier to kill them? Look for the dancing men and target them with your weapons. Just make certain that there isn’t a dance festival going on.

Chelsea Clinton was out campaigning for her mother in Wisconsin when she fielded a blunt question from the audience. I thought he answer was not only snarky, it was quite telling. From the New York Times:

“Has your mother shown any remorse for the fact that her vote cost Iraqis a million of their lives?” a student asked Chelsea Clinton on Monday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ms. Clinton replied: “She cast a vote based on the best available evidence. Perhaps you had clairvoyance then, and that’s extraordinary.”

The fact of the matter is that Hillary constantly harps on the point that she has more experience then her opponent. I guess that would mean something if she had a track record of being right about things.

She has a lot of experience in being wrong.

She was wrong about her husband having a sexual relationship with a 22 year old intern. She blamed a vast right-wing conspiracy, not that her husband had resumed his adulterous ways. He obviously didn’t have a clue that her husband was getting it on with one of his interns. She was not only wrong, she lacked the imagination to even contemplate that something was wrong.  Remember, it wasn’t the first time her husband had strayed.

She was then wrong about Iraq. Not only was she wrong, she refuses to now admit her vote was wrong. The only thing worse then someone who gets something wrong is someone who refuses to admit their mistakes. You can’t learn from your mistakes if you can’t first admit — even to yourself — that you’ve made a mistake.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to grasp that concept.

It seems Chelsea Clinton seems doesn’t realize some of us actually thought it was a mistake to invade Iraq from the very beginning. Twenty-one Democratic senators voted against H.J.Res. 114. None of those senators had magical powers. They were right. Chelsea’s mother was wrong.

We don’t need a president with experience in always being wrong.  I think we’ve had more then enough of that type of president.

If only Saddam Hussein didn’t have all those weapons of mass destruction mothers wouldn’t have to leave their young children for months at a time and go to Iraq. Terri Gurrola comes back from Iraq and embraces her daughter. Gurrola served in Iraq for 7 months.

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