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Maliki Comments a Blow to McCain

Started by washingtonindependent · 10 months ago

For five years, the reasoning behind the U.S. occupation of Iraq has been that the Iraqi government believes that a U.S. military presence is needed to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation. Popular sentiment in Iraq may run heavily against the American presence — as it does in the ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • ajm8127

    11 months ago

    "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, 'U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.'"
    --
    Obama has stated that he could "refine" the withdrawal based on conditions in Iraq.
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    So, how can McCain's weblogger Michael Goldfarb, write about the Obama-Maliki withdrawal plan as being "an unconditional timeline we reject not only as being dangerous but unfeasible." That is clearly not the case.
    reply
  • spencer_ackerman

    11 months ago

    I know!!!! It's almost like Goldfarb is, like, stupid or dishonest or something.
    reply
  • groucho

    11 months ago

    The recent turn in the debate over the "success" of the surge now reveals the clear way in which both sides are talking past each other. The surge was promoted by President Bush as a response to the call last year for prompt withdrawal. The claim was that, if we just sent in more troops and pacified the country, we could then withdraw. But now Bush/McCain admit that the real goal of the surge was to pacify the country enough so that Americans would stop complaining about our casualities and support permanent occupation. Of course, the opponents of the invasion have claimed all along that permanent occupation was the real goal. So at least we have the (modest) satisfaction of this admission. But it does seem unfair for McCain and his allies to claim that the surge worked when they did not tell us that the only goal was to keep us there rather than to get us out. Obama should continue to insist that the surge was a failure if it does not permit our withdrawal--the original goal.
    reply

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