In the time it takes you to read this post, another 103 civilians — the vast majority of them women and children — will have been slaughtered or maimed by the murderous US air raid campaign being waged indiscriminately inside Barack Obama’s refreshingly clean skull.
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I’m waiting for Sen. Biden to accuse Sen. Obama of ripping off his whole “shoot from the lip” schtick.
Not to mention the articulate and bright nature of the Oba-Messiah’s left frontal lobe and steely spine, respectively.
That was directed at the post, not Karl.
How does he get the brillo pad up in there?
B. Hussein Obama For Prez: Because only he has the audacity of hoping the U.S. military abandons its policy of mercilessly mowing civilians from its deathplanes!
Is clean a euphemism for remarkably free of grey matter ?
At the risk of disrupting the puppy pile here, couldn’t Obama’s comment have possibly been taken in the context of “insufficient military force = messier operations”? You know, how your relative force level limits your operational palette, such that the ability to reduce collateral damage is dependent on the available complexity of your tactical mix? I don’t want to get tagged as some sort of spin doctor or liberal apologist, I’m just asking because if I had not had Obama’s political opponents to clarify and interpret his intentions for me, there is a significant danger that I might have taken those words in that entirely reasonable context.
In the immortal words (okay perhaps I chose to ignore the sarcasm) of Ted Leo and the Pharmicists …
Bomb, Repeat, Bomb!
Gabriel – Seeing as though he is calling for a withdrawal of the troops by March ’08, it would have to be an incredibly nuanced view to think that his comments were in fact, about insufficient troop levels. Maybe so, but since his spokesman confirmed the comment, I suspect he meant what he said.
He must be a big man. Planes and civilians inside his head. What else is in there?
This TW generator is broken. I can take the made up words, but seulement? French? On this site? Without the accent?
Yeah but the call for the removal of troops is a diplomatic instrument. Since his legislation effectively says “give us the progress we asked for or we’re leaving” it is not a troop-withdrawal unless you’re pessimistic about the prospect of political stabilization in Iraq. If the threat of withdrawal is just the goad that the Iraqi gov’t needs to agree to our demands, Obama’s bill doesn’t bring all the troops home, and we get to claim a certain degree of success in Iraq. It adds teeth and substance to Bush and Rice’s wheedling “or else” and if it works correctly, everybody walks away satisfied. Except the nuts on the far right, who can’t stand the success of a Democratic idea, and the nuts on the far left, who can’t stand the success of Bush’s Iraqi terraforming. And who gives a crap about them?
and since when was this Congress’ job? I mean, they’re free to carp about it all they want, but they have NO authority to dictate troop movements. They hold the purse strings and can defund, but we’ve already seen that most Congress critters don’t want to take that responsibility.
Cutting funding is a bargaining tool, not a reasonable option, because just turning off the ATM would be catastrophic. If the Congress wanted to make a cheap middle-school point at the expense of the troops and the country, they could exercise the power of the exchequer, but if they are more concerned with the national welfare and a productive solution to the problems presented by our Iraq adventure, they have to find a subtler way to influence the situation. The White House has crassly exploited that fact for years, secure in the knowledge that the GOP Congress had no interest in dissent and the Democrats didn’t have the balls or the talent, and the time is long overdue for adults to step in and get the situation under control. The trouble is that the legislative/executive relationship is predicated on what amounts to a number of gentlemen’s agreements, where everybody asserts that they have these rights and privileges out of custom but comes to the negotiating table at the end of the day to work out a deal. If either side says “damn the torpedoes we’re going to do what we want and you can’t stop us” they end up weakening their position, and that’s what the executive has been doing. They have created a situation wherein the legislative branch has the political capital (manifested in the perception that they have a rsponsibility to act)to pull a move like dictating military strategy. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the bed the President made for himself. He’s not much of a strategist.
Gabriel:
I assume from your lingo that’s you’re a subject of the Commonwealth. Which is unfortunate, because you’re challenging the well-researched principle that Americans are, in fact, the most charitable people on Earth.
Because your interpretation of Mr. Obama’s words is about as charitable as it is possible to get without abandoning the text entirely.
But you probably get your news from the Beeb, so it’s understandable.
Oh, and BTW, the part where the 535-member temper-tantrum we call the Congress is the Adults of the situation… priceless!
On a slightly more serious note, if you’ve ever seen that little interview with Obama’s “better half,” you might see where some of these whackjob statements come from.
But whether it’s carelessness or idiocy, someone who blathers on about US troops blowing away bajillions of innocent people in faceless raids… well, that’s not what we like to call “Presidential material.”
Half right and all wrong. Commonwealth of Virginia, son. You’ve mistaken my fetish for colorful vocabulary for British citizenship. Not the first time. You’ve also mistaken my obvious disdain for the Congress for the exact opposite, somehow. Maybe you had a long night, but your hamfisted mangling of my meaning raises definite doubts about your ability to parse the words of politicians, which are often considerably more abstruse than mine. But just for another example of how I roll, I’d call someone who refers to US forces blowing away innocent people in faceless raids “refreshingly divorced from the popular romanticism that characterizes combat as organized and morally unambiguous.”
But just so we don’t get off on the wrong foot here, the BBC can suck it.
There is no reason to parse Obama’s statement. He said it. His spokesperson confirmed it, in even stronger language.
Gabriel does an excellent job of reformulating the point of the oringla statement, but we have come to expect the Left to make simple meaning fungible.