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(NOT tax cuts...there have been none since before Reagan)

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ORIGINAL: bipolarber

Yup... leaving responsibly. Which is the word you have to use when your political opponents accuse you of just "cutting and running." Measured pullout. Within the 16 month timeline the Maliki government has demanded. (Which even the Bush administration has adopted, only they call it a "time horizion" so as not to appear to be the two faced weasles they are.)

Which, I might add, was first discussed when candidate Obama was on his Iraq visit, which John McCain suggested (nay, demanded) he take. Why do you suppose Malaki waited until then to ask for the pull out? You don't suppose he's learned that you don't get anywhere dealing with Bush/McCain, and their ilk, do you?

Thanks for the concern over our "wound", but like a narrow minded, straight vanilla at a play party where you don't belong, it appears you got squicked out by a little blood play....  :)

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/91651

Sorry, Barack, You’ve Lost Iraq.

Bush's efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an '08 election issue for Obama, Clinton.

Jan 12, 2008 | Updated: 11:49  a.m. ET Jan 12, 2008 
In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: "We're putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington," he told reporters. "The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process." The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush's Iraq coordinator in the White House—in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Most significant of all, the new partnership deal with Iraq, including a status of forces agreement that would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, will become a sworn obligation for the next president. It will become just another piece of the complex global security framework involving a hundred or so countries with which Washington now has bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements.

Asked whether he and the Pentagon were considering a larger drawdown than the current one—which would shrink the U.S. presence to a pre-surge level of about 130,000, he added: "Certainly there is a possibility of that." In fact, one Pentagon contractor who is working on the long-term U.S. plans for Iraq says that the administration is considering new configurations of forces that could reduce troop levels to well under 100,000, perhaps to as few as 60,000, by the time the next president takes office.

The upshot is that the next president, Democrat or Republican, is likely to be handed a fait accompli that could well render moot his or her own elaborate withdrawal plans, especially the ones being considered by the two leading Democratic contenders, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama, undeterred by the reported success of Bush's surge, is pushing ahead with his plans for a brigade-a-month withdrawals that would remove the U.S. military presence entirely. If current Defense Secretary Robert Gates can draw down to, say, 12 brigades by 2009, a senior Obama adviser told me Friday, "then we can get the rest out in eight to 10 months."

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

              Barack Obama is now going to "end the war in Iraq, RESPONSIBLY."  That's a great word to break a promise with, isn't it? 

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ORIGINAL: NumberSix

Tal Thad,

I don't know what your point was admittedly, or what this is in retort to. So, I may be out of line here, but I fuckin' doubt it.

That agreement will never see light of day, you see; part of that negotiation is that there is a permanant barracks for united states troops (on the order of what we have in germany or japan or korea) in Iraq.

That requires approval of the Congress of the United States of America, which even if they all were named John McCain, ain't gonna happen.

It is a mere parlour trick of onanism, for images sake.

He's shooting the wad, but it ain't gonna be hitting nobody.

That dog won't hunt, and it will definitely come to the ADHD attention of America if he can get the bill up before his term runs out.....I am betting he is hoping he can't so that image wise it looks like he had a plan all along and the inconvienient truths will be spent on the ground.

Ron 

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ORIGINAL: philosophy
While i can understand why the less reasonable Republicans would have loved to hear Obama say, "we're going to end the war in Iraq irresponsibly", i don't think you can spin the opposite in the way you'd like to........

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ORIGINAL: Owner59



Thad,you must admit though,that this is a word game.

Come on now,time to stand up and tell it like it is.

One guy(McCain) wants our troops to be in Iraq for an indefinite period of time and arguably, for generations.

The other wants them out ASAP.

Show me I not correct.

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

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ORIGINAL: philosophy
While i can understand why the less reasonable Republicans would have loved to hear Obama say, "we're going to end the war in Iraq irresponsibly", i don't think you can spin the opposite in the way you'd like to........

        Sure I can, Phil.      Barack Obama has unquestionably been opposed to the Iraq war, since before the invasion.  By the vague statements of "ending the war," he allowed the protest bundle to paint their own vision of what that meant in the great blank canvas where his oration functions so well.  By adding the word, he gives himself an out from the promise, and puts a stamp of ugly reality where delusional dreams had been sketched in.

       I think it was a smart decision.  It demonstrates he is getting some practical knowledge to compare to his previous idealism.  For those who wanted him to stay idealistic though, they'll be looking at the drivetrain of the change bus.

      

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

Well put.

I love the English.

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ORIGINAL: NumberSix

You guys have factual information that this is the case, or did you both just get done listening to the imbicile Limbaugh?

You all must get together for coffee, and plan strategy....

You imagine that you say something that is profound and all knowing, how every thing that a 'Republican' says is shitting diamonds, and causing 'Democrats' (insert right and left if you want)  to throw their shit at the glass cage walls like apoplectic monkeys..........

Well, it ain't so.  Now did this latest papal bull come out of committee in the minneapolis airport where two senior republicans just finished pounding each others rostrums or what?

LOLOLOL.

We know they have evidence of WMDs! hehehehehehe.
Geo.W 'Arbusto' Bush

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

opps sorry ,mate.

All you UKers speak pretty good American and look alike.

I meant it in good faith.

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

Well normal folks aren`t as intelectually gifted or able to read minds like you,heritic.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

By adding the word, he gives himself an out from the promise, and puts a stamp of ugly reality where delusional dreams had been sketched in.
      

i've italicsed what, seems to me, to be the area where i think we disagree. Basically, we differ in the semantics of this. i don't see a refinement of a vision into a more practical framework as taking an out from the promise of the vision.

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

By adding the word, he gives himself an out from the promise, and puts a stamp of ugly reality where delusional dreams had been sketched in.
      

i've italicsed what, seems to me, to be the area where i think we disagree. Basically, we differ in the semantics of this. i don't see a refinement of a vision into a more practical framework as taking an out from the promise of the vision.

        No?  What about those who projected their own vision into the empty framework he built?  It's not semantics.  It's legalese.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

Are those who projected onto Obama in the way you suggested significent or not? And, in a spirit of fairness, is there an analogue to such a group on the Republican side?