Obama is Clueless

Barrack Obama has presented his plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. Essentially, he plans to surrender in Iraq and try to win in Afghanistan. Here is a guy that has been to Iraq only once and has never stepped foot in Afghanistan. He also claims that Iraq has never been the central front in the war on terror. I guess he did not hear bin Laden say it was. Obama needs a serious reality check here. We are winning in Iraq, Qaeda in Iraq is defeated and the government there is meeting most of the benchmarks set by Congress. Of course, Obama has to continue to pander to his leftist, defeatist base. Reality does not matter, as long as his base his pissed off at him.

I am simply amazed that he is about to go off on a so called "fact finding" trip, when he has ignored the facts to date. Why bother? He has no use for facts. He has already decided to surrender in Iraq.

Here is an article by people that have just returned from Iraq. They have published their assessment on the situation there. This should be must reading for Obama and his campaign advisers. This assessment was written by people that are well respected for their objectivity. Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Ms. Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War. Mr. Keane is a former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. All have just returned from their most recent visit to Iraq.

Here are a few excerpts from their assessment. - Sailor

All of the most important objectives of the surge have been accomplished in Iraq. The sectarian civil war is ended; al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been dealt a devastating blow; and the Sadrist militia and other Iranian-backed militant groups have been disrupted.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has accomplished almost all of the legislative benchmarks set by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration. More important, it is gaining wider legitimacy among the population. The attention of Iraqis across the country is focused on the upcoming provincial elections, which will be a pivotal moment in Iraq's development.

AP

A boy enjoys a ride at a park in Baghdad, Wednesday, July 9.

The result is that we have an extraordinary – but fleeting – opportunity to advance America's security and the stability of a vital region of the world.

As far as the civil war is concerned, there have been virtually no sectarian killings recorded for the past 10 weeks. Violence is still perpetrated by organized groups, but AQI, the remnant Sunni insurgents and Shiite fighters are now focused on attacking their own members who have defected to our side. This is a measure of their weakness. The Iraqi population is increasingly mobilizing against the perpetrators of violence, flooding American and Iraqi forces with tips about the locations of weapons caches and key militant leaders – Sunnis turning in Sunnis and Shia turning in Shia.

This is some thing that Obama has blissfully ignored and, quite frankly, denied has happened. Listening to his latest rant on Iraq, one would get the impression that nothing has changed there. He is still claiming it is a civil war!

The larger strategic meaning of these military and political advances must be kept clearly in mind. Iraq remains a critical front in al Qaeda's war against the U.S.

Discussions in the American media about whether AQI is "really" al Qaeda are puerile. AQI's leadership, largely foreign, is part of the global al Qaeda network operating in support of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden and his lieutenants in Pakistan and around the world send support (including foreign fighters) to Iraq and closely follow the situation there, as their repeated public pronouncements show no less than their actions. Al Qaeda's central leadership is not prepared to lose in Iraq, and has been seeking ways to regain lost ground.