A Blog Called Hope

Citing Iraq, Senator Obama emphasizes the need to repair foreign relationships and shift our focus to adequately combating terrorism abroad

Proclaiming that the Bush administration, along with John McCain, have been misguided in their war on terror, Senator Obama re-emphasized his plans to withdraw troops from Iraq and refocusing our military efforts on finding Osama bin Laden and terrorist leadership where they truly are.

“In fact – as should have been apparent to President Bush and Senator McCain – the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was. That’s why the second goal of my new strategy will be taking the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan… Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.” -Senator Obama, July 15, 2008.

Along with responsibly ending the conflict in Iraq and capturing Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leadership, Senator Obama outlined three additional foreign policy goals his administration will have:

• Securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue nations

• Achieving true energy security

• Rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century

Senator Obama proclaimed that we must rebuild the bridges the Bush administration has broken, and learn from our own history as a nation. What made America great and prosperous was our amicable relationships with foreign nations and our genuine sense of justice and democracy.

Barack Obama acknowledged that the past eight years have set us back, but he has also realized that these are challenges that can be, and must be, overcome in order for America to return to prominence on the world stage and ensure our everlasting safety. Senator Obama concluded his remarks by accurately asserting, “We know what is needed. We know what can best be done. We know what must done. Now it falls to us to act with the same sense of purpose and pragmatism as an earlier generation, to join with friends and partners to lead the world anew.”

For a transcript of Senator Obama’s speech, click here.

Senator Obama’s campaign has released its latest ad, touting Obama’s strong record on combating terrorism and keeping Americans safe

McCain backtracks on support of Iraq war and President Bush, in direct conflict with past assertions

Given the length of the conflict, and slumping position in world affairs, there are few things the American people are more concerned about than ending the war in Iraq and bringing our brave men and women home.

Sensing this ever-present reality, John McCain’s camp has ramped up the anti-Bush/Iraq war machine.

On Meet the Press this past weekend, McCain Victory ‘08 Chair Carly Fiorina sidestepped from McCain’s history of support of President Bush and his war on Iraq.

“To say John McCain was aligned with President Bush on the prosecution of the war in Iraq is to change history.” -Carly Fiorina, July 13, 2008.

The only persons hoping to alter history is the McCain camp. The truth of the matter is that John McCain was one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq, and even when the battle began to go array, McCain steadfastly supported the President’s decision to go to war and strategies implemented during the war.

“I think the President has led with great clarity and I think he’s done a great job leading the country.” -John McCain, April 23, 2003.

“We’ve got to stay the course.” -John McCain, June 29, 2005.

McCain and his supporters continue to feed the American public what they want to hear, all the while leaving the truth behind a smokescreen of lies. McCain’s history is one of prolonged Bush and Iraq war support coupled with public double-talk and political deceit.

This past Sunday, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) faced off with

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) on ‘ABC This Week’

The two Senators from neighboring states traded barbs over the war in Iraq and which Presidential candidate would best serve the interests of the people of the United States.

Trying to bridge the overwhelming popularity gap between the two Presidential candidates, Senator Lieberman tried to paint McCain as strikingly similar to Obama on the war in Iraq. However, Senatory Reed quickly pointed out that, “Sen. Obama is outlining a strategy to redeploy our forces out of Iraq. Sen. McCain has a strategy of staying there indefinitely. That is the key, significant strategic difference.”

Here is a snippet from the interview.

For more, visit ABC News or the ABC’s News Blog.

In interview with Matt Lauer, McCain proclaims bringing American troops home from Iraq is “not too important”

After several months of attacking Barack Obama for his ‘naiveté’ on Iraq, it seems McCain himself is the one of touch.

During an interview with Matt Lauer last week, John McCain was questioned about his stance on Iraq; particularly his position on a timetable for withdrawal. McCain took the opportunity to downplay the significance of the potential of our brave men and women returning home, and instead spewed more nonsensical foreign policy and took another jab at Senator Obama.

Here is a portion of Matt Lauer’s interview with the Republican Presidential candidate:

MR. LAUER: When the president, though, came up with this surge at a time where everyone, it seemed, was thinking the contrary, you endorsed it with great conviction and great courage. And a lot of people now say the surge is working.

SEN. MCCAIN: Anybody who knows the facts on the ground say that, yes.

MR. LAUER: If it’s working, Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?

SEN. MCCAIN: No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.
American casualties and the ability to withdraw — we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are.
But the key to it is we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way. And that way they will be safe and serve our country and come home with honor and victory, not in defeat, which is what Senator Obama’s proposal would have done.

So what’s not important to John McCain is soldiers’ being safe and spending time with their families and loved ones. What IS important to McCain is “victory”, what IS important to McCain is pride. Is pride and “victory” worth the 120,000+ American lives that are on the line in?…

“I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history…Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” -President Richard Nixon, 1969.

Couple these insensitive and ill-informed assertions with those he recently made about Iran, it is becoming clear John McCain does not have a handle on his own cash cow, foreign policy.

John McCain may claim he’s a different kind of politician, but his efforts to cover up his misstatements about the war in Iraq instead of admitting he was wrong ring of the same kind of dishonesty we’ve come to expect from the Bush Administration. After seven years of a president who will distort the truth for political purposes, Americans don’t want four more years of the same with John McCain.

Last week we saw the lengths John McCain and his campaign will go to cover up misstatements he made about the facts on the ground in Iraq.

After inaccurately stating that U.S. troops were “drawn down to pre-surge levels,” McCain refused to admit his error and claimed what he said was “just facts.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]

Likewise, his campaign went into Washington spin-mode, organizing a last-minute conference call where McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann said that McCain’s mistake was an issue of “semantics” and that “[w]e are talking about a verb tense.”

But no one was buying it. One reporter wrote that “the attempt by the McCain media machine to spin the mistake as a simple matter of ‘verb tenses’ is an insult to our intelligence.” [The Fact Checker, Washington Post, 5/30/08; http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/30/mccain-call-nitpicking/]

McCain Says U.S. Troops At Pre-Surge Levels. “We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]

Troops in Iraq Not Expected to Return to Pre-Surge Level Until End of July. “The increased U.S. presence in Iraq — which topped out at about 170,000 troops — is expected to go down to 140,000 by the end of July. U.S. officials plan to keep 15 combat brigades in Iraq through the end of the year, though ongoing assessments could allow commanders to change those numbers.” [Washington Post, 5/20/08]

McCain’s foreign policy competency called into question due to Al-Qaeda-Iran gaffe

John McCain must be thanking his lucky stars that the remaining Democratic hopefuls continue to battle it out to decide who will get the nomination. Or otherwise, McCain’s own incompetence and misunderstanding of world affairs would be in the limelight.

But his confusion is not about just ANY issue. It is about THE predominant global conflict facing America. One could understand if McCain was a little mixed up about the Nigerian oil conflicts, strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or even human rights atrocities in China and Darfur. MAYBE an observer, or a voter, could let such a gaffe pass because they are not issues directly affecting our country at this moment. (Though, one would like to believe a potential leader of our country would have knowledge of such prevalent global topics.)

The issue is al-Qaeda. The issue is the leading terrorist organization in the world and our most dangerous and heinous adversary. The issue is al-Qaeda’s relationship (or lack thereof) with the always contentious Iran.

Unfortunately, John McCain appears to not grasp the realities surrounding al-Qaeda, Iran, and terrorism as a whole.

In recent weeks John McCain has upped his efforts to poke holes in Obama’s candidacy, and particularly what McCain deems Obama’s ‘naïve’ foreign policy approach. Speaking in front of an American-Israeli committee, McCain took the opportunity to rail against Mr. Obama’s desire to sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During one of his rants, John McCain falsely linked al-Qaeda to the Iranian government. McCain asserted unequivocally that, “Al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.”

The truth of the matter is that the Sunni al-Qaeda is a rebellious counterpart to the ruling Shi’a regime in Iran. In fact, Iran has gone to great lengths to keep adversarial al-Qaeda fighters out of the country. It is this deep-seeded conflict that continues to enflame the already volatile situation in Iraq. So to think, and then say, that there is a relationship between a Sunni faction in al-Qaeda and a hard-line Shi’a regime in Iran is immensely deceptive.

It is hard not to notice the similarity in rhetoric between McCain’s baseless assertions and those spewed by Bush in late 2002 and early 2003. As we have seen, by way of the 9/11 Commission’s detailed report, al-Qaeda had no ties, affiliations, or relationship with Iraq. Despite this, the President continues to hold out false hope that he was somehow correct in his misrepresentation of Middle Eastern dynamics.

It’s these kinds of unfounded assertions that continue to shift our focus away from where it should be; finding al-Qaeda leadership and stemming the spread of its brutal ideology.

For those who hoped that the lens would shift back to a genuine focus on waging the war on terror, think again if McCain is elected. Given McCain’s misrepresentations, it would appear that the misleading of the American people won’t end with George W.

… Maybe getting riled up about McCain improperly aligning two prominant figures in our war on terror is an overreaction. Maybe foreign policy is not McCain’s strong suit… Problem is John McCain himself has asserted that foreign policy is a point of strength for him. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal back in November 2005, McCain proclaimed, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

Given McCain’s egregious mix-up of two key U.S. foes, it certainly appears McCain needs a lot more education on BOTH (economics and foreign policy) fronts. Perhaps McCain should crack open some history books and prepare to pull some all-nighters studying; because, are there any more significant concerns facing our country than the economy and the war on terror?

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are to submit their progress report and testify to lawmakers on Capitol Hill April 8 and 9. With the recent increase in violence in Iraq, including a failed “definitive assault” against Sadr’s forces in Basra and increased mortar attacks on U.S. compounds in the Green Zone, the forthcoming testimony will be critically examined by Democrats who wish to see an end to the war in Iraq.