On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Barack Obama was shown a video of
his comment from early 2007 in which he said, "I am not persuaded
that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the
sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the
reverse."
Here was the exchange that followed:
MR. BROKAW: Do you believe that President Maliki
would be in a position to more or less endorse your timetable of
getting troops out within 16 months if it had not been for the
surge?
SEN. OBAMA: You know, we don't know,
because in my earlier statements--I mean, I know that there's that
little snippet that you ran, but there were
also statements made during the course of this debate in which I
said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily
quell the violence.
That defense seemed a bit familiar to me, so I decided to take a
stroll down memory lane.
Obama in his "historic" race speech on March 18:
And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend
Wright were the snippets of those sermons
that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or
if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures
being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would
react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright on "Bill Moyers Journal" on April 25:
"The blowup and the blowing up of sermons preached
15, seven, six years ago and now becoming a media event, not the
full sermon, but the snippets from the
sermon and soundbite having made me the target of hatred, yes, that
is something very new and something very, very
unsettling."
Obama in his "throw Wright under the bus"press conference on April
29:
But what I can say is I was very clear that what he
had said in those particular snippets I
found objectionable and offensive and that the intention of the
speech was to provide context for them, but not to excuse them,
because I found them inexcusable.
Apparently, if you're Obama, you can say that adding more troops to
Iraq would increase violence, but actually mean that it would
reduce violence. Of course, this is the
same Obama who can watch his spiritual mentor say "God damn
America," laud Louis Farrakhan, and call Israel a "dirty word," and
still defend him as a tolerant religious leader and a patriot.
topics:
Barack Obama, Television, Iraq, Israel
