FOX: Obama: Surge Succeeded Beyond ‘Wildest Dreams’

[kpete]

read it here - i refuse to go past the headline, kp

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/04/obama-surge-succeeded-beyond-wildest-dreams/

[seabeyond]

1. i am not gonna, lol lol. i refuse. you wuss.... lol. sittin around waiting for soneone to read.

[stolivodka]

2. I knew it was a mistake for him to go on FOX.

Damn.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. Here you go, scairdy:

I highlighted what McCain will probably work into to his speech tonight. (This stuff is all so predictable)

_______________________________

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Watch Barack Obama’s interview with Bill O’Reilly at 8 p.m. ET Thursday on FOX News Channel.

However, he added, the country has not had enough “political reconciliation” and Iraqis still have not taken responsibility for their country.

Speaking on other national security matters, Obama said he would not take military action off the table in dealing with Iran, but diplomacy and sanctions can’t be overlooked. (snip)

[geek tragedy]

5. That's a major gaffe. n/t

[Connie_Corleone]

15. How can it be a gaffe when he's said it several times before?

[1corona4u]

27. You know, you have made snide comments for a while now about

Obama...I wonder who's side you're really on now...

[marshall]

7. I wonder if this will be mentioned tonight in the speech

And we all know O'Reilly will be crowing about this for days (whether anybody's listening to him or not).

[Gabi Hayes]

8. wtf is WRONG with him?

this campaign is ALL about the sound bite, as this thread indicates

I can't believe he used those words

and, yes, 'concern' freaks, this does 'concern' me, because you WILL see this in pug ads by tomorrow

what a huge mistake. I said on another thread that whatever he says will be twisted against him, but he's provided easy fodder

very discouraged by this tactical error. no way to spin this positively; another attack point which dems will be forced to defend for a LONG time

in contrast, dems need to find and use quoted from mccain like this one to put the PUGS on defense for a change:

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=rWOZKeOauNI

[cliffordu]

29. Ah, yes this train is never late.

All second guess all the time.

[democrat2thecore]

4. Here 'ya go - Oops (on edit) - here it is AGAIN - thanks, K&H

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

However, he added, the country has not had enough “political reconciliation” and Iraqis still have not taken responsibility for their country.

edit to add paragraph

[ClarkUSA]

6. Don't fall for the Fox feint, kpete... Obama no doubt added his famously smooth "but" afterwards.

Have faith that Obama has a calm canniness forged from 20 months of hellacious campaigning and
gotcha politics.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. it doesn't matter. they'll only use the first part, and it'll be in an ad tomorrow.

or the next day

just watch what they do with it

[ClarkUSA]

13. So what? What Obama said undercuts one of McCain's central arguments --->

McCain has been constantly whining at his townhalls about how Obama doesn't think the surge worked even now,
trying to paint Obama as being a stubborn neophyte.

Well, he can't do that anymore. There might be that ad you're fretting about, but Obama can cut any number of ads
featuring McCain's turnabouts on offshore oil drilling, immigration, tax breaks for the wealthy, etc.

I don't see why it's so bad for Obama to admit the truth.

[stolivodka]

19. NOT THE TRUTH

The Shiite-dominated government just ethnically cleansed most of the Sunni factions, creating the "peace" of the dead. Now they are splitting into rival Shiite factions which will soon be at each others throats.

This didn't have a damn thing to do with the fact that Bush sent several thousand additional troops to hide behind 20-foot walls in the green zone.

[ClarkUSA]

21. The surge worked in reducing violence. Sens. Webb, Kerry, Biden, etc. have all said so.

I am doubtful that all those additional troops hid "behind 20-foot walls" all this time.

Have a link?

[stolivodka]

24. How could there be violence

when all of the non-shiite factions have been wiped out?

So what if all of those guys said that the "surge worked"? Since Bush didn't define victory, he was going to take any sign of anything resembling progress in Iraq and use it to claim that the surge "worked". Democrats fall for those kind of lame rhetorical traps, all the time.

Iraq has been split into 3 ethic regions with de-facto autonomous governments. If Bush wants to claim that's what he was going for, this whole time, he can do so. I, for one, don't call that "victory" or "success". It was a screwup for Senate Democrats to fall for this trap, and it was a screwup for Obama to. I'm sure that he had a big "but.." clause in his statement, but SURPRISE! FOX left that out. What the hell did he expect!?

[ClarkUSA]

34. No link, eh?

Didn't think so.

You might want to tone down the angry ranting and supply some facts to back up your claims.

BTW, I trust Senator James Webb's take on the surge more than yours.

[slinkerwink]

10. not a gaffe. he's said the same thing, and he's said it's ultimately

about the political success of Iraqis governing on their own.

[Richardo]

12. Thank you slinkerwink - I was going to point that out.

He's said the exact same thing before. As a military exercise, success, it's the corrolary activity that the surge was supposed to allow that has failed.

[geek tragedy]

16. the "no one could have anticipated" seems like an invitation

for McCain to talk about judgment.

[Alhena]

11. Who cares? The surge is history- people care about what's ahead

and to be honest- there is a lot less violence in Iraq than before. I still don't want to spend 10 billion dollars a month there though- let's spend it here.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. I think the bigger issue is that

Condi signed an agreement for Obama's "timeline", Shrub reduced the 15 month tours of duty to 12 months, all signs point to the Administration CONCEDING to Obama. I.e., Shrub has eaten crow.

[maseman]

18. I don't have a problem with this at all

I heard him say this the other day somewhere. The surge has worked to reduce violence. period. But we need to get out now. He layed out a timeline and the Shrub has essentially signed on to it.

[quakerboy]

17. the Surge was far more successfull than my wildest dreams.

In that we are not all dead in WWIII with Iran yet. yet.

[cameozalaznick]

20. The cool thing about this is...

my reich-wing dittohead brother watches O'Reilly and might actually see Obama.

[OwnedByFerrets]

22. I've said it when a repug said it, and I will repeat it when a democrat says it...

how can there be ANY use of the word success in Iraq when we have been party to the killing of 1.2 million citizens, when we have made refugees of 2 million more from their own country, when we are responsible for another 2 million being forced from their homes AND the almost complete distruction of the countries infrastructure?
I LOATHE the use of the word SUCCESS in conjunction with IRAQ.:mad:

[msallied]

23. Well no SHIT it succeeded. If we had sent in enough friggen troops to begin with

we wouldn't have had NEARLY the levels of violence and death we experienced prior to the "surge." Democrats and Republican critics of the war have said several times that we didn't devote enough resources to the effort, so it would make sense that sending in more troops would probably work.

This does not speak to the wrongness of the war. It is simply a fact that in providing more troops, we've been able to stem off further violence as should have been the case YEARS ago.

[kpete]

26. mho

the "surge" is code for "ethnic cleansing"
kpete

[msallied]

32. I think that's a little extreme. But ok.

If they wanted to ethnically cleanse the country, they would have sent in far more guns and fire power.

The term is "imperialism."

[lamp_shade]

25. What's the big deal? He's made the same comments many times before...

using pretty much the exact same words.

[TexasObserver]

28. Obama knows how to pick and choose his issues. He's doing that.

Obama is trying to shape the debate so that it is about topics he can WIN on, not just give a defensible position. He's trying to cull all the issues that allow the GOP to smack him around. He knows that the key to winning is controlling the debate and parsing the issues properly.

[totodeinhere]

30. It doesn't matter if the surge was "successful" or not.

That's not the point. The point is that it was a crime for us to get involved there in the first place. History is littered with tyrants who had successful military campaigns, but that didn't make them right.

[kwolf68]

31. Agree

And now we see some here on DU saying we needed more troops to begin with. Some people shift with their favorite politicians. I am passionately for Obama and I know the practical approach here, but the war was always wrong.

[msallied]

33. Saying we needed more troops to begin with is not a tacit endorsement for the war.

It's saying that they made TACTICAL and STRATEGIC errors in the war that they INSISTED on having. that if they were going to go in there they should have followed the advice of the generals that Bush later fired, and that was to have more troops. I'd rather they hadn't gone over there at all and was never behind this war. Even if it had gone off without a hitch with minimal casualties and violence, I would have been against it. But that doesn't negate the fact that we screwed up in the initial execution of the war and should have had more ground troops to better contain the violence.