This should surprise no one, but Joe Biden’s telling more whoppers on Iraq. Remember when he tried to claim credit for success in Iraq after opposing the surge? Now he claims that the Bush administration has decided to adopt Barack Obama’s withdrawal plan, too. CNN hits the buzzer, except they botch the sound effect:
Actually, Alina Cho sounded surprised by the final verdict of “misleading”, and it’s no small wonder given her confused explanation of the issue. Biden deliberately misleads his cheering throngs by confusing a couple of issues. First, the reductions in the SOFA are keyed to security improvements, not dates on a calendar, which has always been the Bush administration position. That’s nothing new.
Second, there is a vast degree of difference between setting a timeline in January 2007 and October 2008. The latter acknowledges that the violence has decreased to a level that the Iraqi Army can handle mostly on its own. The former would have been an abject retreat and would have left Iraq as a failed state. Barack Obama wanted to declare defeat and run out of Iraq, chased out by terrorists that we managed to beat without Obama’s support.
In any normal cycle, this demonstration of weakness in the face of the enemy would have sent Obama back to Illinois. As it is, voters still have that opportunity on November 4th.
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