Obama’s tough love towards Iraq: that’ll teach ’em
Quite some time ago I came to the point of having difficulty reading Obama’s speeches and interviews in full. I don’t mean cognitive difficulty; I understand them well enough. I mean a weariness at the overwhelming combination of factual errors, conceptual flaws, deceptive characterizations, and arrogant preenings that appear in nearly every sentence.
Critiquing his words thoroughly would be a full-time job, and what’s the point? On the right most people already get the picture, and on the left most people still think he’s a great sage.
So I confess I have not read Obama’s interview with Thomas L. Friedman in the Times today in its entirety. What I have read is all the commentary on memeorandum from both left and right, including generous and lengthy excerpts of Obama’s statements from the Friedman article itself.
That process is sobering enough, and I was stone-cold sober already. Most of what Obama said to Friedman conveys an attitude towards the geopolitical world that can only be described as delusional and dangerous. However, if you go to the blogs on the left that, according to memeorandum, have discussed the Friedman/Obama interview, you’ll see almost nothing but high praise coming from their readers.
A brilliant man, that Obama, the best president in their lifetimes.
Yesterday I wrote a post entitled “Peace Prize in Our Time” which discussed the mindset of the left:
The worldwide events of the last few years underscore how putting the “can’t we all just get along?” crowd in charge is one of the surest paths toward chaos and war… Heart of Darkness is not something they want to acknowledge, and so they believe they can wish it or will it or talk it away…
It seems like madness to me.
Although I wrote those words the day before Obama’s Friedman interview, the interview quite nicely illustrates what I said (whether Obama actually believes his own words or not is another question). His interview is a monument to the “can’t we all just get along?” principle, writ large on a world stage. It is indeed madness—a madness that’s been tried many times before, and found wanting—but a madness that apparently appeals to his constituents and has the added benefit of justifying his passivity in the face of evil:
Obama made clear that he is only going to involve America more deeply in places like the Middle East to the extent that the different communities there agree to an inclusive politics of no victor/no vanquished..
Madness, as I said.
Obama doesn’t use the word “evil” for ISIS; that’s not his style. His message is basically that he held back from destroying ISIS (an axis of the axis of evil if there ever was one) when it would have been relatively simple because he wanted to teach Maliki and Iraq a lesson that they should stand on their own two feet and that they should be more inclusive:
…[T]he Kurdish region is functional the way we would like to see. It is tolerant of other sects and other religions in a way that we would like to see elsewhere. So we do think it’s important to make sure that that space is protected, but, more broadly, what I’ve indicated is that I don’t want to be in the business of being the Iraqi air force. I don’t want to get in the business for that matter of being the Kurdish air force, in the absence of a commitment of the people on the ground to get their act together and do what’s necessary politically to start protecting themselves and to push back against ISIL.”
The reason, the president added, “that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.” That only would have encouraged, he said, Maliki and other Shiites to think: ” ”˜We don’t actually have to make compromises. We don’t have to make any decisions. We don’t have to go through the difficult process of figuring out what we’ve done wrong in the past. All we have to do is let the Americans bail us out again. And we can go about business as usual.’”
In other words, “I didn’t remove the cancerous tumor because I wanted the patient to learn to eat more fruits and vegetables before that.” Of course, if the tumor kills the patient, and then metastasizes to other parts of the world—well, too bad. The lesson is the most important thing.
Most liberals seem to have no difficulty whatsoever in applauding this stance. But California Senator Diane Feinstein appears to be one of the last holdouts of relative sanity on the liberal side:
Feinstein called for a broader military campaign against ISIL, not just the targeted missions authorized by the president.
“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future. Inaction is no longer an option. I support actions by the administration to coordinate efforts with Iraq and other allies to use our military strength and targeting expertise to the fullest extent possible,” Feinstein said.
She’s a lonely voice among Democrats, as far as I can see.
If you can bear to read the entire Obama/Friedman interview, be my guest. But I’ll just close with an excerpt that features one of Obama’s signature outrageously inappropriate and profoundly hypocritical comparisons:
At the end of the day, the president mused, the biggest threat to America ”” the only force that can really weaken us ”” is us. We have so many things going for us right now as a country ”” from new energy resources to innovation to a growing economy ”” but, he said, we will never realize our full potential unless our two parties adopt the same outlook that we’re asking of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds or Israelis and Palestinians: No victor, no vanquished and work together.
“Our politics are dysfunctional,” said the president, and we should heed the terrible divisions in the Middle East as a “warning to us: societies don’t work if political factions take maximalist positions. And the more diverse the country is, the less it can afford to take maximalist positions.”
While he blamed the rise of the Republican far right for extinguishing so many potential compromises, Obama also acknowledged that gerrymandering, the Balkanization of the news media and uncontrolled money in politics ”” the guts of our political system today ”” are sapping our ability to face big challenges together, more than any foreign enemy. “Increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking the most extreme maximalist positions,” he said, “and sooner or later, that catches up with you.”
So this is uniter Obama, he of the 2004 convention speech. The persona that’s been revealed as a lie countless times, Obama being the single person most responsible for our “dysfunctional” and divisive politics, champion of the “maximalist positions,” he who can’t resist calling out Republicans on the right as responsible for his own failures to even attempt a compromise, the man who barely knows the meaning of the word “compromise” in his own dealings with the right.
As to whether Obama believes what he says: I think it is enough for him to know that he said it, therefore it must be right. He really does believe he is the smartest man in the world. He doesn’t have to dig for the truth like most of us, nor does he feel the pain of having to make hard decisions. Someone else is always to blame for not conforming to Obama’s grand ideas.
Like you, Neo, I can’t stand to read about or hear what he says. I can’t stand to see his phony smiles.
1. Iran now knows (if it didn’t already) that it is free to build nuke bombs.
2. ISIL has *our* weapons and we won’t sell them anything or even use our full air power to protect them.
3. Obama knows there is evil in the world. It is the Republican Party because it won’t give him what he wants.
Yes, Senator Feinstein is a voice for sanity (ie, more war) because she’s a San Francisco liberal as well as a patriotic American.
And then there’s this:
“Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.
“Each year, MILCON’s members decide which military construction projects will be funded from a roster proposed by the Department of Defense. Contracts to build these specific projects are subsequently awarded to such major defense contractors as Halliburton, Fluor, Parsons, Louis Berger, URS Corporation, and Perini Corporation. From 1997 through the end of 2005, with Feinstein’s knowledge, Blum was a majority owner of both URS Corp. and Perini Corp.”
Maximalist
Etymology dictionary
maximalist “extreme radical in the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party,” early 20c
n. a person who rejects compromise and expects a full response to (esp. political) demands.
Etymology: French maximaliste, from maximal- (probably from English maximal) + -iste -ist; intended as translation of Russian bol’shevik Bolshevik
: one that believes in or advocates immediate and direct action to secure the whole of a program or set of goals; specifically : a socialist advocating the immediate seizure of power by revolutionary means as opposed to gradual achievement of limited aims (as by the processes of parliamentary democracy)
2. Sozialist, der die sofortige Machté¼bernahme der revolutioné¤ren Kré¤fte fordert.
[German translation: Socialist who calls for the immediate takeover of the revolutionary forces.]
he shows his colors to color blind people who have not taken the time to read about what he has read about (as recomended)
the terminology he picks denotes his education and interests, and what he read. westerners rarely use that slovak word… (you would be surprised at how many words come from this area)
Unié³n de Socialrevolucionarios Maximalistas
translation
Obama ever the alinsky ite
“accuse your opponents of what you yourself do ”
I suppose we should be grateful he never developed the * cackle* that Hillary chooses to employ when
adhering to her Alinsky strategies.
Bolsheviks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks
Mensheviks
The Mensheviks were thus opposed to the Bolshevik idea of a Vanguard party and pursuit of socialist revolution in Russia.
n the context of the theory of Marxist revolutionary struggle, vanguardism is a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically advanced sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations in order to draw larger sections of the working class towards revolutionary politics and serve as manifestations of proletarian political power against its class enemies.
think of all those organizations that are different but whose leadership converges… feminism is the largest (but that is the overall word for over 100+ variants like special nets to catch different fish)
i wonder how close we have to be to the thing that is happening before we want to read as to the histories they are copying, borrowing from, being helped by, etc..
just curious
If you dont know these histories as the Vanguard do, you cant understand what they are saying when they are talking. they talk in a way in which the average incurious uneducated (or uninformed if you think that less negative) person will think one thing as they will construct that meaning from surface ideas and so on… while to the vanguard the language is dotted with words or synonyms that have deeper meanings.
this has duping delight to it. like tiqya… the rubes think one thing, those in the know, hear another thing. the victims are unwilling to learn how not to be victims, and so, the superiority complex is reinforced as is the deserving need to take care of what is to them, ignorant stupids
And the NY Times further reported that “…President Obam-Bam followed his stiff admonishment to ISIS with one fistums on his hip and the other wagging a stern finger.”
Washington Post: “…Having long witnessed Mr. Obama’s red lines, muscle flexing, follow-through and steely resolve elsewhere in the Middle East, ISIS sent an announcement via Facey & Tweety stating,’BWHAAAAAAAAAAHH…(Bronx Arab Cheers) and ‘We ‘Fwaaaaid…We ‘Fwaaaid..!!’..”
His Infantile Majesty replied to the ISIS defiance by solidly leaving for vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
Oh yes & the Pres musing about *threats to America*
just an opportunity to work in a bit of rahm emmanuel’s
advice.
“never let a good crises go to waste”
My anchor point for evaluating Obama’s judgement on foreign policy remains his statement as a state senator that described the Saddam problem fairly accurately but then leaped to his jaw-dropping conclusion that if we just maintained the ‘containment’ status quo, Saddam would just quietly fade away on his own since that’s what normally happens to tyrants.
If you really want your blood pressure to rise, read Obama’s comments today about Iraq — before heading off to Martha’s Vineyard — especially this part during the Q & A after them:
…as if this was my decision…
We have never had a worse president.
hit enter too soon
if obama used bolshivik in his comment, everyone would get it, but he used the oldest words… the words that only those steeped or suffered may know, and so, he is also sending out a message to the world as to his actual position.
without knowing this, there is no way to get what is going on
think of it as a revolutionary language…
kind of like parents hiding their discussion in front of children
Big mistake in 2. “We won’t sell the KURDS any weapons….”
At first it appeared that Obama was merely punishing the Kurds for being so pro-American but until one remembers he made his first overseas call to a foreign head of state to Mahmoud Abbas.
Fool or knave, the Obama enigma?
I posted at another article about a Rabbi just murdered in Miami. A few days ago there was a pro-Hamas demonstration in the diamond district of NYC. It was obviously intended to intimidate the Jews who operate there although this time they were chased off. I wonder what is next?
The weapons are reserved for Californian Democrats, AQ in Syria, and Feinstein’s network. They are NOT for the Kurds to use.
Long ago I too felt a profound “weariness at the overwhelming combination of factual errors, conceptual flaws, deceptive characterizations, and arrogant preenings that appear in nearly every sentence” and words that procedeth out of his mouth. I listen to almost nothing he says.
“Most of what Obama said to Friedman conveys an attitude towards the geopolitical world that can only be described as delusional and dangerous.” neo
I judge it to be pathological.
All that said, when Obama says, “Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.” I find that plausible. However when he says, “as if this was my decision.” it leads me to suspect that he didn’t try very hard, seeing it as a convenient excuse allowing him to do what he wanted to do; cut and run. As always with Obama, everything he says is deceitful, once thoroughly examined and as neo points out, at this stage, what’s the point…
“I’ve indicated … I don’t want … I …”
Someone needs to tell Obama, btw, that the statute of limitations ran out on blaming Bush at least by the end of his first term.
Worst. President. Ever.
“Obama made clear that he is only going to involve America more deeply in places like the Middle East to the extent that the different communities there agree to an inclusive politics of no victor / no vanquished . . .”
. . . except as it applies to domestic USA politics, for which the only acceptable modus operandi is to do whatever it takes (and then some) to utterly vanquish and humiliate those that have the temerity to not quite see things His way.
I wrote my comment immediately above *before* I had even finished neo’s piece; my comment was my instant reaction.
Then I finished neo’s piece, and she covered its essence very nicely there at the end. Oh well, I got to vent just a little.
Ann…”We have never had a worse president.”
Amen. And, we’ve never had a Bigger Liar as president. Nobody comes close. He, The Immaculated Boy King, refused to let more than 3,000 American troops stay for the SOFA. He inherited a Huge Victory and peaceful country. Far more peaceful than his homicidal adopted city of Chicago. So, all of this current Hell is Bush’s Fault, Your Infantile Majesty???? BULLSHIT. Absolute pathological lying.
Ann,
Wow, that’s a cynical spin. Obama recouched issues that were on the table for negotiation with the Iraqis as requiring invitation from the Iraqis.
I’m not well-versed in our SOFA history everywhere else, but to my knowledge they all are periodically renewed with a negotiation process that often involves ironing out points of contention between us and the sovereign host nation.
Obama is citing to the false narrative. It matters to set the record straight on the Iraq mission, including its irresponsible ending. The contemporary reporting on our premature exit from Iraq needs to be renewed to the public to hold the President accountable (yeah, I know):
Michael Gordon, NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/world/middleeast/failed-efforts-of-americas-last-months-in-iraq.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0
Max Boot, WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203554104577003931424188806
The way Obama operates in foreign affairs reminds me very much of the ideas of students at Berkeley during the Vietnam War. They always assumed the North Vietnamese were “agrarian reformers.” All these simple peasants wanted was for the U.S. to get out and leave them alone. Good people, just with different values than we. If we leave them alone, they will work things out amicably. And so Obama thought about Iraq. It makes a nice picture to these academic dreamers. The U.S. is always the bad guy in their minds.
Obama believed that he could make nice with the Muslim world and that would take the edge off the Islamist anger. Finish up the awkward wars and get out of the Muslim world. Then the casus belli for Islamists would end. Or at least their desire to attack us would end. A nice, neat dream of the way it ought to be.
Unfortunately, the Islamists have very different values. And they’re not agrarian reformers. Just as the North Vietnamese weren’t agrarian reformers. As Churchill noted:
“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
All those who want to serve this country in the military or government should memorize that passage. And refer to it whenever anyone tries to tell you that the Islamists are no threat to a modern country. Or that we can make nice with them and they will fade away. When their oil runs out, they will fade away. Until then it’s battle stations. We can never let our guard down and never do what Obama has been doing- weaken our military.
The Leftist alliance was always a greater threat to the US than Islamic Jihad ever was. It’s a matter of distance and walls.
I really do hate this guy when I realize the consequences of his (in) action. You put it very well Neo when you state how he acts like what is needed is to teach Maliki a lesson yes – ‘eat your vegetables!’ And what he appears to be forgetting is that you cannot compromise with these forces, and that just putting them into the government (parliament or whatever they have) would not have done the trick. Their nature is to want more and more… ISIS now ISIL. So now people are dying. Horribly, to put it mildly. Genocide. Of many groups —
Diane Feinstein, for all her flaws, always did have some common sense. Too bad that is not shared across the board. It seems obvious. But apparently, not.
For those of you with the stomach for it the
Daily Mail UK has prominently posted picture of
Iraqis they have crucified for ? not converting or some other transgression……. horrifying, disturbing, such a waste of young lives.
JJ: “And refer to it whenever anyone tries to tell you that the Islamists are no threat to a modern country. Or that we can make nice with them and they will fade away.”
The remarkable thing is that ISIS is making no effort to hide what they are. There is no Nazi Olympic showcase going on. Nor even Hamas propaganda.
ISIS wants the world to know what they are. Instead, the leftists and isolationists in the West are going into overdrive to rationalize a narrative for ISIS.
(re Ann’s comment)
There are so many legitimate reasons to despise Obama. But above all I absolutely detest his fanatic refusal to take responsibility for *anything*, *always* pointing the finger of blame at someone else. It is the most abominable and loathsome quality a “leader” can possibly have.
Wellll, Barry, if you just agree with us about everything and stop fighting and criticizing and being so judgey and stuff, why, we’ll be happy to welcome you under the Big Tent.
/snort
I put this on another thread, but what the hey. Trey Gowdy! is such a bracing antidote to Ole Mushbrain. Here is is, giving a Harvard professor a “bit of stick”:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/q3rj7xo
I can no longer stand to listen to Obama. When he is on tv I mute him. Thank you for listening to him for me.
It’s not just Obama. It’s excuses “all the way down” with his supporters.
Nothing is ever the logical results of leftism:
Detroit: collapsed as part of the rust belt business migration of manufacturing. Culprits: Globalism and Capitalism.
$7 trillion in debt in 5.5 years: 90% was BOOOSSHHHH’s fault, because poor Obama was stuck 1) paying for wars he didn’t want and 2) 2008 crash that hurt the economy (also Bush’s fault).
Collapsing foreign policy: Either because of Republican obstruction in Congress, or not even defended because we shouldn’t be involved overseas.
(note: this is the same direction as some other isolationists advocate. Nice that we have a real-world example now)
Dick Cheney has—Thank You—responded very bluntly to Obama’s most recent lying blather, blaming President Bush for the present horrendous catastrophe in Iraq. Cheney the Great has pointed out the obvious truth that he and all neocons and most conservatives have been saying for the nearly 6-years of this Shipwreck of Leftism: Obama and his pathetic bunch have been projecting WEAKNESS abroad and they’ve been undercutting, sabotaging and diminishing our armed forces.
Also, our Friends and Allies DON’T Trust our word, much less our ‘back up’. Iraq was at peace and bringing along a fledgling republic after our Huge & Costly Victory there under Bush/Cheney when the Boy King announced to his legions of Lib-Lefty Punks and a closely interested Radical Islam that he was withdrawing from that success.
He made the SOFA contingent on 3,000 Maximum American Warriors to be left. In more understandable terms: NOT remotely enough to make a difference and keep freedom progressing. So it was rejected by an Iraq which needed(and deserved)a serious force of 25-35,000.
My God, what a moral & physical coward Barack Hussein Obama is. What a tepid twit. Author—Luck Us—of the Perpetual Campaign, Perpetual Fund Raisers, Perpetual Travel, Perpetual Golfing and Plush Vacations interspersed ‘twixt all of the aforementioned. No Work. No Leadership. No Balls.*
*Rather a VTC: Vast Testicular Concavity*
NeoConScum: “Huge & Costly Victory”
It was expensive, but just FYI, OIF did not cost trillions of dollars as claimed by the false narrators.
artfldgr, Geoffrey Britain, and I raised this point under another post.
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
The CRS report measured the “cumulative total appropriated [for] … war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for Iraq and Afghan war veterans”, covering DOD, State/USAID, and VA Medical costs. The report states all costs for Iraq totaled 805.5 billion dollars through FY2011 and 823.2 billion dollars estimated through FY2012. The report states the DOD-specific total war cost as 757.8 billion through FY2011 and 768.8 billion dollars estimated through FY2012.
That’s not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s also not trillions of dollars.
Matt_SE: $7 trillion in debt in 5.5 years: 90% was BOOOSSHHHH’s fault, because poor Obama was stuck 1) paying for wars he didn’t want and 2) 2008 crash that hurt the economy (also Bush’s fault).”
Eric’s link to the CRS report on the costs of the wars puts a lie to the claim that all our debt is due to war and not something much more perfidious.
In 2009, the democrat Congress and Obama passed, with no Repub support, the porkulus bill of $795 billion. A one time injection of cash into the economy to stimulate economic activity? Nope! The money was given to democrat supporters and organizations -teacher’s unions, green groups, renewable energy (solar and wind), bailouts of favored corporations (where unions wanted the bailouts), extending unemployment, the HAMP program for homeowners underwater on their mortgages, and many other favored progressive programs.
Then they failed to submit a budget for the next four years. Instead they relied on continuing resolutions, which maintained the new level of spending – the pre 2009 budget plus $795 billion plus whatever new spending they could shoehorn in. That amounts to $4 trillion + of deficit spending right there. During Obama’s six years welfare spending, SS disability spending, and outlays on the ACA have zoomed spending levels up to account for another $1.5 trillion.
For the last two years, Obama and Congress have been cutting Defense expenditures to the bone while all social spending has increased.
We must never let anyone claim that our $7 trillion in deficit spending over the last six years is due solely to war spending.
Eric & J.J…. Well and accurately stated. ‘Fraid I should be a tad more careful when using the descriptive, “Huge & Costly Victory”, Eric. I don’t mean $$-Cost, though, as you and J.J. say, it wasn’t cheap $$-wise. I mean the long “slog” until the Surge brought large success and an end(mostly) to the killing. Blood, material, patience, determination and steadfastness. All that to be casually thrown away deliberately by Obama. Our Warriors loved and honored President Bush and still do. No such cherished and earned honor do they have for The Infantile Majesty. Nada. Zip.
Obama has sickeningly dishonored all that was done there by our Warriors and C-in-C.
NeoConScum,
I wasn’t really correcting you. I wanted to drop off the numbers because as JJ and others have pointed out, there’s been a lot of talk that OIF cost trillions and caused the national debt.
It’s a brazen lie. But as we know, the narrative contest of the activist game is not accountable to the truth.
JJ, see this, too:
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
Obama supporters (and Obama himself) blame Bush for deficits and debt.
One brutal takedown of this occurred in WaPo:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-claim-that-90-percent-of-the-current-deficit-is-due-to-bush-policies/2012/09/26/e9bfbcd0-077e-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html
The money shot:
2009:
Economic/technical differences: $570 billion (46 percent)
Bush policies: $330 billion (27 percent)
Obama policies: $325 billion (27 percent)
2010:
Economic/technical: $815 billion (51 percent)
Bush: $225 billion (14 percent)
Obama: $565 billion (35 percent)
2011:
Economic/technical: $720 billion (46 percent)
Bush: $160 billion (10 percent)
Obama: $685 billion (44 percent)
“Economic/technical” is the shortfall of revenue from projections due to the economy sucking.
The rest is self-explanatory.
Good link, Eric. It shows that, in relation to our GDP, Iraq and Afghanistan are cheaper than the WWIi and the two Cold War wars – Korea and Vietnam. Our military is smaller but much more lethal.
As an example: In Vietnam we used mostly “dumb bombs.” We did well if 30% of our bombs hit the intended targets. With today’s “smart bombs” they seldom miss. Much more efficient and lethal.
That’s why we can spend a smaller percentage of our GDP on defense. Unfortunately, we have the wrong kind of airplanes for the close air support that is needed against ISIS. The A-10s are the type of aircraft that is most effective for that. The Air Force is phasing them out, and though the Marines would like to have them, DOD has not agreed to transfer them. So we’re stuck with mostly Navy and Air Force FA-18s as close air support vehicles. They need Forward Air Contollers (FACs) to identify and illuminate targets. Whereas the A-10s can go low and slow enough to ID targets of opportunity and can conduct lethal strafing, which is very effective against infantry.
What caused the national debt to sky rocket was 2006’s election of Democrats to Congress. Bush’s Congressional deficits were decreasing from 2002 to 2005.
So basically the Democrats got about 500 billion to distribute to their allies and cronyies, and then unleashed a prepared propaganda campaign blaming Bush II for the very problems the Democrats knew they caused. It’s standard SOP for them.
JJ,
The Warthog has a special place in the hearts of soldiers and I guess Marines, too.
It probably has something to do with Democrats like Feinstein ,needing the F18 build contracts and kicking out the A10 competition.
Generally that’s how it goes in the behind the scenes.
Matt_SE,
One of the things I find most disturbing about the current regime that goes beyond the cynical pale is the unashamedly dishonest extent to which they’ll wage the narrative contest of the activist game.
They have a habit of their most aggressive politics based on false premise, and then when the false premise is exposed, they continue the lie and pursue the same lie-based course of politics, as the WaPo fact checker points out in your cite.
Sunshine has no effect on them as a disinfectant.
I meant: Sunlight has no effect on them as a disinfectant.
Eric, thanks for that link. And Amen to you, J.J., and ymasarker.
My personal favorite American weapon—and I don’t know that it was used in OIF or the mountain caves of Afghanistan, is the delicate, sensitive Fuel-Air Explosive. ((-:
Remember the films of those babies in the Iraqi desert in Gulf War I?? Remember ‘The Highway of Death”? Now, that well earned BBQ was ecstasy to watch. I’d love to see them toasting ISIS—except in cities—wherever the dark age butchers are seen in Iraq.
“… the man who barely knows the meaning of the word “compromise” … ”
= = = = = = =
Obama is real clear on *HIS* understanding of “compromise”.
We heard it from him back in 2009: “I won.”
HIS version of compromise is the same as my Dad’s old joke: “Let’s compromise– We’ll do it MY way.”