B-b-b-ut, Barack Obama's Chicken Sop for the Soul was supposed to be tasty!
Johnny Nichols says yum-yum! Amy Goodman's addicted to the stuff!
And he's going to 'end' the illegal war!
"MEMO: Obama's Iraq Plan: Just Words"
To: Interested Parties
From: The Clinton Campaign
Date: March 8, 2008
RE: Obama's Iraq Plan: Just Words
Once again, it looks like Senator Obama is telling voters one thing while his campaign says those words should not to be mistaken for serious action.
After months of speeches from Senator Obama promising a hard end date to the Iraq war, his top foreign policy adviser that counseled his campaign during that period is on the record saying that Senator Obama will "not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator."
Voters already have serious questions about whether Senator Obama is ready to be Commander-in-Chief. Now there are questions about whether he's serious about the Iraq plan he's discussed for the last year on the campaign trail.
Senator Obama has made hard end dates about Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign and has repeatedly attacked Senator Clinton for not being clear about her intentions with regard to troop withdrawal.
It turns out those attacks and speeches were just words. And if you can't trust Senator Obama's words, what's left?
This latest incident is part of a larger pattern where Senator Obama doesn't deliver on the promises he makes on the campaign trail -- whether it's his 2004 Senate race or his 2008 White House campaign.
In 2003, Senator Obama said he was for a single payer health system, but now opposes plans that cover every American. He promised to repeal the Patriot Act, but then voted to extend it. He promised to normalize relations with Cuba, but flip-flopped when he started running for president.
In 2008, Senator Obama rails against NAFTA in Ohio while his top economic advisor assures the Canadians his rhetoric is just "political positioning." He promises to opt in to public financing if the GOP nominee does, but then breaks that pledge in real time. He promises to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months, and now his top foreign policy adviser says that he's not relying on the plan.
With a short record to run on, Senator Obama's entire campaign is based on the speeches he makes on the campaign trail. So when he and his advisers dismiss the plans he touts on the stump, it undermines his entire candidacy.
Americans have heard plenty of speeches. It's time they got serious solutions and that's what Hillary is going to deliver when she is President.
It is a very big deal but you've seen Panhandle Media either ignore it or dismiss it. Some have said it's what politicians always do. (Isn't Bambi a 'different' kind of candidate?) You've seen them play expert and state that everyone knows this sort of thing happens. But if 'everyone' knows it, why is Bambi still repeating his false claim? If everyone knows it, how do they know it because it's been made invisible or minimized.
One of the few outlets to seriously cover it has been The Boston Globe. From their coverage, we'll note Derrick Z. Jackson:
SAMANTHA POWER quit as Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser for stooping to call Hillary Clinton a "monster." That was the least of her embarrassments. The monster she left in the room is far more dangerous to both Obama and Clinton, whichever one wins the Democratic nomination. Power merely resigned. She left behind a stunning air of resignation about Iraq.In a BBC interview last week, Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard University global affairs professor, said Obama's plan to remove combat troops from Iraq in his first 16 months was a "best-case scenario." She said Obama "can't make a commitment, in whatever month we're in now, in March of 2008, about what circumstances are going to be like in January of 2009 . . . He will of course, not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator. He will rely upon a plan, an operational plan that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now."
The Obama campaign went into a damage control mode that veered into the territory of George H.W. Bush's 1988 Republican nomination speech in which he declared, "Read my lips: no new taxes." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Obama maintains a "rock-solid commitment . . . It will be 16 months at the most where you can withdraw combat troops."
