Barack Obama purges Web site critique of surge in Iraq

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Monday, July 14th 2008, 8:10 PM

"WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama's campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an "improved security situation" paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s' "hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice."

Campaign aide Wendy Morigi said Obama is "not softening his criticism of the surge. We regularly update the Web site to reflect changes in current events."

GOP rival John McCain zinged Obama as a flip-flopper. "The major point here is that Sen. Obama refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong," said McCain, adding that Obama "refuses to acknowledge that it [the surge] is succeeding."
jmeek@nydailynews.com

More Obama Amateur Hour: Obama Advisor Tells BBC that Obama Iraq Withdrawal Plan Isn't Certain

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

It’s the best case scenario

POWER: It is –

SACKUR: And of course in Iraq we’ve never seen best case scenario

POWER: We have never seen best case scenario

SACKUR: So we needn’t necessarily take it seriously at all.

POWER: What we can take seriously is that he will try to get US forces out as quickly and as responsibly as possible. And that’s the best case, estimate of what it would take.

Sen. Obama has repeatedly criticized Hillary for not having a "firm" and "clear" withdrawal deadline:
Sen. Obama: 'Why we would try [Hillary’s] approach as opposed to simply setting a timetable for withdrawal strikes me as a convoluted approach to the problem.' "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to introduce an amendment repealing the congressional authorization for the war. It would require the president to seek new authority from Congress if he wanted to continue operations past Oct. 11, 2007, five years after initial authorization was given. ‘If you simply repeal the language, then presumably you'd have to reauthorize something. You've got 150,000 troops over there and support personnel,’ Obama told The Associated Press in an interview after a campaign stop in Las Vegas. ‘Why we would try that approach as opposed to simply setting a timetable for withdrawal strikes me as a convoluted approach to the problem,’ he said." [AP, 7/13/07]
Sen. Obama: Sen. Clinton 'hasn't given a firm timetable in terms of executing the withdrawal, and I think that's a problem.' "And in--there is a difference, though, between myself and Senator Clinton on a couple of these issues. Number one, she hasn't given a firm timetable in terms of executing the withdrawal, and I think that's a problem. I think we have to provide certainty to the Iraqi leadership, so that they know that we are serious about changing course." [NBC Meet the Press, 11/11/07]
Sen. Obama: 'Senator Clinton continues to not provide a clear timetable for how she would pull our troops out' of Iraq. "Where Senator Clinton continues to not provide a clear timetable for how she would pull our troops out, so those are all differences we will continue to talk about." [Obama Press Conference Transcript, 11/9/07]
Sen. Obama: ‘I do think it’s important for us to set a date.’ When asked if he could make a commitment for a withdrawal date, Obama said, "I do think it is important for us to set a date. And the reason I think it is important is because if we are going to send a signal to the Iraqis that we are serious, and prompt the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds to actually come together and negotiate, they have to have clarity about how serious we are. It can't be muddy, it can't be fuzzy. They've got to know that we are serious about this process." [CNN debate, 1/31/08]

Obama Waited 16 Months to Give His First Senate Floor Speech on Iraq & He Used it to Oppose Withdrawal Plan

Obama has used his oppostion the Iraq war as a weapon to counter any arguments about his lack of experience. According to HuffingtonPost.com, "when he was actually in a position to influence policy from the U.S. Senate, he did not give a speech devoted to Iraq for 11 months, and waited 16 months to give his first floor speech dedicated to Iraq, which happened to express his opposition to Senator John Kerry's troop withdrawal plan. He said of his views on Iraq in 2004, "There's not much of a difference between my positions and George Bush's position at this stage." When asked if he would have voted for the 2002 resolution on Iraq had he been in the Senate at the time, he said in 2004, "I don't know." Since he joined the Senate, Senator Obama's voting record on Iraq has been virtually identical to Senator Clinton's. Indeed the only time they voted differently was when Senator Clinton voted against confirming General Casey, the former Commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq, to be Army Chief of Staff."

Daily KOS - "Obama Just Surrendered to Bush" on Iraq

Some may not remember that Obama's opposition to the Iraq War wasn't quite so adamant last year. While Obama did oppose the war in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor, when he reached the US Senate he failed to sponsor a single bill to end the war in 2005 and 2006. He opposed John Murtha's plan to set a timetable for redeployment and he voted for every bill to continue funding the war. According to Politico.com, "Obama has found himself facing a storm on leading liberal blogs over a weekend interview in which he spoke as though he were an observer, not a participant, in the confrontation between Congress and Bush over a threatened veto of legislation that sets a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

"I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground," he told the Associated Press, adding: "I don't think we can muster at this point a majority of Senate Democrats or Republicans to vote for a cutoff of funding."...Obama's opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 is unquestioned. But what was a sharp anti-war line on the campaign trail in 2004 – when he said he favored voting against funding the war – turned into a more pragmatic Senate performance, where Obama has taken a less aggressively anti-war tack than fellow Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Russ Feingold (Wis.) and others.

As a review of their votes by the website TPMCafe showed last week, Clinton and Obama have almost identical voting records on Iraq in the Senate; they cast different votes just once, when Obama voted to confirm Gen. George Casey as the Army chief of staff and Clinton voted against his confirmation.

Obama's choice of pragmatism over confrontation has long frustrated some anti-war figures, and their sentiment boiled over after Obama's comments to an Associated Press reporter in Iowa last weekend.

"Obama just surrendered to Bush," wrote Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Faced with complaints from Obama supporters, he asked them to "imagine if this was Hillary saying these things. You'd be demanding her head on a pike, and so would I."

Obama Told the NYT He Wasn't Sure How He Would Have Voted on Iraq War Resolution

Much has been made of President Clinton's campaign for Hillary. Unfortunately, lost in all the non-stop media coverage of claims that Bill had stepped over some boundary, were the facts.
Obama has claimed that he was right from the start on the Iraq War. He maintains that this makes him the better choice...so it seems fair to look at his record. When given the opportunity to condemn Senator's Kerry and Edward's votes on Iraq, he declined and instead said that he did not know how he would have voted had he been a Senator. He campaigned for pro-war Joe Lieberman, refused to condemn Kerry and Edward for thier votes, says he isn't sure how he would have voted, but still stakes a claim that he has the morally superior postion when attacking Hillary on her Iraq vote.
The NYT on July 26, 2004 wrote, "In a recent interview [Obama' declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time.' But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. 'WHAT WOULD I HAVE DONE? I DON'T KNOW.' What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made'"