The Obama Iraq speech

Barack Obama gave his big speech on Iraq and the War on Terror. His message?

“What’s missing in our debate about Iraq, what has been missing since before the war began, is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy,” Mr. Obama said in a 38-minute speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. “This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.”

To which nearly 70% of the country said "Shit yeah" and alternately "No shit." John McCain immediately bitched, moaned, and clung to the unpopular war, slamming Obama for having thoughts about Iraq before he completed his upcoming trip to Iraq. This infuriated his speech writers as they had to trash the other McCain speeches complaining that Obama had an opinion on Iraq without having been there in a while and a planned speech that complained Obama went to Iraq and had the gall to come away with different opinions about it than St John. The campaign still hopes to salvage the latter speech. He then pulled out his dick and asked someone to measure it before claiming "I know how to win wars", perhaps remembering an alternate Viet Nam that happened in his mind.

This is of course the same McCain that sees every twist and turn in Iraq as an excuse to pursue the exact same strategy no matter what. Things get better? Need to stay. Things get worse? Need to stay. Iraqi's tell us to stay? Need to stay. Iraqi's tell us to leave? Really need to stay. The same John McCain who couldn't let the truth get in the way of what he wanted the facts to be. The man who went to a market in Iraq and proclaimed how it safe to walk down the street and how people weren't getting the full picture. When it was revealed that it was only safe because his visit contained more troops and weaponry than Patton had to assault Germany with, he feigned a hearing problem and remarked "So?" in a manner that would have brought pride to any four year old.

Obama also pointed out that Iraq was costing us in our fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and promised to put more troops there to, you know, fight the people that attacked us on 9/11 and the ones that pose a threat to us. McCain re-iterated his promise to follow bin Laden to the gates of hell. When told by staffers that those gates were in the mountainous border of Pakistan, McCain faked falling asleep and then later had those staffers double the font size of "Straight Talk Express" on his plane and bus. He then equated any difference in foreign policy as "losing" and "surrender", warming the hearts of all 12 remaining war supporters.

Obama's plans also pissed of people like the Brookings Institute's Michael O'Hanlon who vainly repeated McCain's vapid criticisms. He was then sat down and it was slowly explained to O'Hanlon that we're supposed to wage wars to make us safer and not to vainly satiate the inflated egos of the idiot pundit class. Through tears, O'Hanlon wept that if we pulled out of Iraq that might mean that he was wrong about Iraq and it had been a bad idea. He was told to suck it up and take it like an adult, but his sobbing was too self-centered for anyone to care what he thought.

Obama ended on the obvious.

“It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large,” he said. “Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned.”

Mr. Obama acknowledged that the addition of tens of thousands of combat troops to Iraq early last year, called the surge, had lowered violence in the country. But he said that strengthened his case for a rapid withdrawal, not weakened it, as Senator McCain has argued.

He said during the 18 months of the surge, the strain on American forces had increased, the cost in lives and money had grown and the situation in Afghanistan had worsened.

“George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq, they have a strategy for staying in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops surrender, even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government not to a terrorist enemy.”

He then correctly identified that the sun had risen and was able to tell his ass from a hole in the ground in a lineup backstage.