Sarracuda rips the lamestream media here in this audio clip from Sean’s show on September 1. Why not? They started it.
Humility and Honesty About Iraq Can Inspire Trust
by Sarah Palin | Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 4:01pm | Facebook
Later today, President Obama will speak to the American people about Iraq. No doubt he will laud the “end of major combat operations” by the date he randomly selected some 18 months ago. His press secretary Robert Gibbs also gave us a glimpse of what else he might say, telling the Today Show this morning that ”What is certainly not up for question is that President Obama, then-candidate Obama, said that adding those 20,000 troops into Iraq would, indeed, improve the security situation, and it did.”
Iraq in 2010 is indeed a very long way from Iraq in 2006, when violence and sectarian conflict threatened complete chaos. But then-candidate Obama did not support the course that brought us here as his press secretary now claims. On January 10, 2007, when President Bush announced the surge, Senator Obama insisted that the surge would actually increase sectarian violence: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” Barack Obama was clearly in opposition to the surge strategy.
Had we followed the course advocated by then-candidates Obama and Biden, the Iraq war would be remembered now as a crushing defeat for the United States and our allies. Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian supported extremists would have claimed victory over America – with grave implications for us throughout the region and the world. Iraq would have descended into full-scale civil war. Iraq’s neighbor would have likely been drawn into the conflict. Parts of Iraq would have been made a safe haven for terrorists to train and plan for attacks far beyond Iraqi borders.
Fortunately for all of us, these events did not occur. They did not occur because America changed strategy in Iraq. President Bush decided to increase our forces in Iraq and pursue a counterinsurgency strategy – a course long advocated by Republicans in Washington. This “surge” policy in 2007 was opposed by many – most notably and adamantly by Senators Obama and Biden. In October 2006, as the violence was spiraling out of control, Senator Obama actually advocated reducing our troop presence: “It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we’ve been in right now.”
