The hasty withdrawal I was thinking of was back in 2007 in the bill he
proposed in the senate:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN00433:@@@D&summ2=m&;
Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 - States that: (1) U.S. Armed Forces
levels in Iraq after the date of enactment of this Act shall not exceed
January 10, 2007, levels without specific statutory authority enacted by
Congress after the date of the enactment of this Act; and (2) except as
otherwise provided, the phased redeployment of U.S. Armed Forces from
Iraq shall begin by May 1, 2007.
more at the link. This bill would have frozen troop levels (no surge)
and the start of withdrawal in 4 months.
The change in position you cite, was not part of his campaign as he
already had the nomination locked up last July. At that time, he no
longer needed to appease the anti-war left and he started moving more
toward the center (in many areas) in preparation for the election.
Actually, his new position in July proves my point that his ending the
involvement in Iraq isn't that much different from Bush, especially
since he hedges his 2010 date by saying he will consider the
recommendations of his military leaders. I'm not worried at all about
Obama's handling of the Iraq wind down as he most certainly won't do
anything to jeopardize the major improvements in both the security and
political situations. (Last time I looked at the news, todays provincial
elections went well; no violence.)
Chris Dunford wrote:
So you agree with Bush on the unwinding of the Iraq war, that it should
be done responsibly, not the hasty withdrawal that Obama campaigned on.
What hasty withdrawal?
Here is what Obama said in an NYT op-ed last July:
"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."
The Army has estimated that Iraqi forces would be ready to take over this
year, but our forces would not be drawn down until next year under the plan
he campaigned with.
So I ask again, what hasty withdrawal?
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
