War Critics Question Obama's Fervor (Some Say Actions Don't Match Talk)

[journalist3072]

War Critics Question Obama's Fervor
Some Say Actions Don't Match Talk

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 15, 2007; Page A01

For antiwar Illinois Democrats, the speech that made them fall in love with Barack Obama was not the one he gave in Boston in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention, but one two years earlier at a hastily organized rally in Chicago on the eve of the congressional vote to authorize the Iraq war.

"I don't oppose all wars," Obama, then a state senator, said on Oct. 2, 2002. ". . . What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

-snip-

But some antiwar Democrats have raised questions about the depth of Obama's opposition, taking aim at one of the signature arguments for his candidacy -- that he is the only leading Democratic candidate who opposed the war from the beginning.

They say that while Obama did argue against the war as a Senate candidate, he tempered his rhetoric and his opposition once he arrived in the Capitol, rejecting timetables for withdrawal and backing war funding bills. He returned to a sharper position, they say, when he started running for president.


Entire article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091402254.html?wpisrc=newsletter

[Benhurst]

1. He is running as the candidate of new ideas and hope. As a supporter

of his in the 2004 election, I'm waiting for an espousal of the truly new ideas (single-payer universal health care for starters) and hope he moves away from LDC positions on everything and becomes the kind of senator/candidate I thought he would be.

No matter who our nominee is, it's time for business as usual to stop. And this country can not even start to recover until all the troops are home from Bush's illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And why in the hell are we still paying BILLIONS to build permanent military bases and a grotesquely over-sized embassy in a country where we are not wanted -- not wanted to the extent of the majority thinking it's all right to kill our troops?

[Benhurst]

2. edit:

"... and hope he moves away from LDC positions ... ." should read "... and hope he moves away from DLC positions... ."

:spank: