Biddle
07-14-2008, 04:40 PM
Holy Crap. This guy is laying down dates and goals for getting us out of Iraq. 2009 Iraq police force is up and running. 2010 troops are pretty much out of Iraq. A sixteen month withdrawl. And he unequivocally states that we will not have a permanent military presence in the country.
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
Wow.
This guy is taking on the issues that his opponent(s) have framed as weak points and un-patriotic and tackled them head on. I am really impressed by the control that he's taken of this whole process. It's like he's redifining the rules of engagement in an election, without waiting for the conscent of the opposition, leaving them to play catch-up all the time. That's a winning strategy. I love it.
Now, we just have to see how accountable he'll be for the promises he's offering...
Check out the entire Op-Ed piece from the NYTimes, here (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin).
As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
Wow.
This guy is taking on the issues that his opponent(s) have framed as weak points and un-patriotic and tackled them head on. I am really impressed by the control that he's taken of this whole process. It's like he's redifining the rules of engagement in an election, without waiting for the conscent of the opposition, leaving them to play catch-up all the time. That's a winning strategy. I love it.
Now, we just have to see how accountable he'll be for the promises he's offering...
Check out the entire Op-Ed piece from the NYTimes, here (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin).