Obama Gets Punked On Iraq . . . Again

By Big Tent Democrat, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 06:49:27 PM EST
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This sound familiar?

I have concerns about cutting off funding . . . I think there is a possibility, given how obstinate the Administration is, that if we try to cut off funding, Bush is hellbent on doing what he is doing . . . he may decide to play chicken and say 'you guys do whatever you want [I'm keeping the troops there]' . . .

No, that was NOT from today's daily kos front page story on Obama.

It is from MY front page Talk Left story of March 2, 2007. So all the Obama sycophants who believe the AP is lying when it writes this:

If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.

need to wake up and stop drinking the Obama kool aid. For months and months, I have been preaching that Obama has been playing a bad brand of politics. To disbelieve a quote that is virtually the same thing he said a month ago, a quote that was ignored by most, but not by me, is to descend into blind hero worship.

Obama has talent and a good heart, but he has a politics problem.

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Obama Gets Punked On Iraq . . . Again | 20 comments (20 topical)

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But as to the fact of the matter (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by andgarden on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 07:02:05 PM EST

isn't he probably correct that there will be a clean bill, just as Miller threatened?

It seems to me, as you suggest, that Markos is fighting the last battle. Shall we try again to get everyone on the same page, or might preventing a clean bill that funds until Oct. 2008--and the Liberman-demanded civil peace that comes with it--be beyond our abilities?

That is not HIS job (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by Big Tent Democrat on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 08:25:48 PM EST

He is a politican.


: Markos dropped the ball on the House bill IMHO. (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by cal11 voter on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 09:22:15 PM EST

That was when a different line should have been drawn by the Dem leadership. Miller, Obama, and the rest of the Dems (except Kucinich) are on the same wavelength IMHO.

: This soon in April, Smiles turn to Frowns (none / 0) (#20)
by fairleft on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 05:28:36 PM EST

Thought we'd have a few more weeks of 'Peace Democrat' false Spring.

not to hijack but what concerns me (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by conchita on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 07:45:27 PM EST

is in his discussion with blitzer about putting up more votes if bush vetoes:

OBAMA: Right. I think that we continue to put a series of votes up and try to convince our colleagues on the Republican side that the only way that we are going to change circumstances in Iraq is if you see a different political dynamic; that there are, at this point, no military solutions to the problems in Iraq; that what we have to do is get the Shia, the Sunni, the Kurd to come together and say to themselves "We, in fact, are willing to start making some compromises around oil revenues, around the arming of militias and so on."
In the absence of that, we can send 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, we're not going to see a significant change.

excuse me, but what right do we have to tell the iraqis what to do with their oil revenues? this makes him (and the house dems who wrote the benchmark regarding the iraqi oil legislation into the house resolution) extremely suspect. this is another enormous reason why i do not think he will veto.

Privatizing the Iraqi oil industry (4.75 / 4) (#5)
by Alien Abductee on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 08:28:17 PM EST

Not sure how much credence to give this article, but the author claims that revenue-sharing as written into the benchmarks of the supplemental amounts to handing over the Iraqi oil industry to American multinational oil companies:

George Bush has a land mine planted in the supplemental appropriation legislation working its way through Congress.
The Iraq Accountability Act passed by the House and the companion bill passed in the Senate contain deadlines for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, in open defiance of the President's repeated objections.
He threatens a veto, but he might well be bluffing. Buried deep in the legislation and intentionally obscured is a near-guarantee of success for the Bush Administration's true objective of the war-capturing Iraq's oil-and George Bush will not casually forego that...
One of the President's benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how the President described it: "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." A seemingly decent, even noble concession. That's all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.
The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only "benchmark" that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5's of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing "benchmark" Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it...

I hope someone more knowledgable about the Iraq Accountability Act and the benchmarks will comment on this.


The oil law info seems credible (5.00 / 2) (#6)
by annefrank on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 09:01:17 PM EST

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/opinion/13juhasz.html?ex=1175572800&en=5bc8a3840572ea18&ei =5070


the author of the article anne frank linked to, (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by conchita on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 09:37:15 PM EST

antonia juhasz, is considered an expert in this area. jerome guillet wrote a diary back in january which disagrees with her position and richard behan's on common dreams. he claims that the production service agreements that will enable the big four oil companies to take over about 80% of iraq's oil reserves are a common practice in the oil industry. as much as i appreciate that this is jerome's field of expertise, i think a critical factor, which i don't recall him addressing, is that production service agreements are not common in the middle east where the oil industry in each country is more commonly nationalized. given that the oil companies are not required to invest in any way in the iraqi economy, not even to hire iraqis, seems suspect to say the least. until the occupation, the iraqi oil workers have long had a very strong union, and i remember reading about them standing up to provisional authority and winning early on in the occupation.

from what i have read about the iraqi hydrocarbon law, it was not drafted by iraqis, but by the u.s. it has not been ratified and the general consensus seems to be a vote in favor of is essentially suicide - both political and literal.

i can't help but wonder if this is at least partially why the supplemental funding resolution seems to have been kept from view until after the vote. certainly doesn't say much for the dems who voted for it.


: I remember reading Jerome's diary on it (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by Alien Abductee on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 11:20:33 PM EST

and not being convinced by what he was saying, since Iraqis are hardly in a position to negotiate the conditions he describes as able to mitigate these types of agreements to make them advantageous to the host country. But the fact that the benchmarks are tied to passing this is outrageous. It's like a protection racket - Turn over your national resources to us and we'll make sure our troops keep you in power. This time Dems can't say they didn't have a chance to read the bill before voting on it. It does suggest some further motivation for Bush to resist restrictions on how long troops stay in Iraq.
BTW, re the Obama comment in USA Today: I read it as him differentiating himself from Hillary and pointing out that she's responsible for getting America into this mess over his objections, and that therefore he's more likely than she is to be able to get us out. In other words, his usual thing of turning a situation to his own advantage but maybe at the expense of other members of his party. I don't think that's a poor political sense at all, just an awesomely selfish one.

It seems to be factual (5.00 / 1) (#18)
by Militarytracy on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 10:47:05 AM EST

but I find it laughable. The oil industry infrastructure is under attack daily in Iraq. Lines are blown, tanks destroyed.....they can write anything on paper that they want but that doesn't make it so for the Iraqi "oil insurgency".


It's odd isn't it (5.00 / 4) (#3)
by brainwave on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 07:50:31 PM EST

Sometimes he gets it exactly right - as in his response to the Madrassa smear, and especially the decision to freeze out Faux - and other times he apparently commits an unforced error of this magnitude. And you're absolutely right, the beef here is first politics, and only secondarily policy. Good heavens! Whatever happened to Never answer a hypothetical? And what about Never show your hand as long as it's the other guy's move?

more (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by orionATL on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 09:13:08 PM EST

obama has more than a "politics" problem with me.

he has a good resume, and, i agree, a good heart.

but

he seemed to come out of nowhere two years ago, (or was it four) and to be INSTANTLY deemed presidential material - a sort of instant presidential coffee.

this smacks of a media campaign.

i suspect that obama is being lifted on a wave not entirely of his own making.

and that is the crux for me.

who sponsored his extended campaign?

and why?

i haven't a clue.

i do know though,
that we do not need any more "name recognition", rock-star, politicians running for president (or being president).

george bush clearly lacked the experience required for an american president, but he had the name recognition, and he ascended to the presidency solely on the basis of his last name and a media campaign.

he did not ascend on his own merits.

obama's current "campaign", i suspect, is all about creating name recognition,

with the purpose of short circuiting, as with bush, the normal political evaluation processes in american politics.

again,

i need to know

who it is that is pushing obama forward?

: He did ascend on his own merits. (none / 0) (#17)
by lilybart on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 09:20:15 AM EST

How can you say that he didn't?
If you actually look at his experience, you will see that he just is that good. I think that this is the way it always goes. Parties are always looking for great candidate material. They didn't pick Obama (if they did) just because. They saw his talent and potential and I am not sure what is wrong with this.

"Date certain" vote if veto (5.00 / 4) (#14)
by Ben Masel on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 12:53:15 AM EST

Feingold interview in Milwaukee Journal/Sentinal

Washington - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will announce today that he has endorsed a plan by Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold to end funding for the Iraq war by March 31 next year.
The measure goes well beyond the target withdrawal date that the Senate narrowly approved last week as part of an emergency war spending bill, and it is part of what Feingold describes as a legislative strategy by Democrats of steadily ratcheting up their anti-war proposals.
In a statement he planned to release today, Reid (D-Nev.) said that if President Bush vetoes a war spending bill over the issue of timelines, Reid will make sure that Feingold's more far-reaching measure is voted on in the next Senate work period.

: Reid and Feingold (5.00 / 4) (#15)
by andgarden on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 02:13:43 AM EST

are our political "A team." This is good news

I would never push for Obama to (5.00 / 1) (#19)
by Militarytracy on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 11:08:53 AM EST

get the nomination. My reason may be considered odd by some. I don't want him to be my President because he smokes. I'm an ex-smoker. I quit 14 years ago after smoking for 13 years. I was smoking a pack and a half a day when I finally quit. I started working out after that. It was embarassing at first, I almost hacked up a lung a few times in the middle of the gym. Cigarettes are wonderful mood modulators, you never feel anything too much when you smoke. Everything stays very medium and if something starts bothering you too much you just light up a cigarette and mellow out. You never overreact when you are a smoker but you can underreact. Obama handleds personal smears great..absolutely fabulous because he doesn't overreact. He underreacts though when it comes to War and as Martha would say that IS NOT a GOOD THING.

hero worship (none / 0) (#10)
by diogenes on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:51:12 PM EST

If the question is whether Obama supports the funding cutoff, then I guess not, and neither does Hillary, since she has said that she would keep troops in Iraq for a long time when elected but would no longer patrol the civil war. I guess that the agenda is to advance the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, oops, John Edwards in 2008.
Hillary as the establishment Humphrey, Obama as the 4 years in the senate RFK, and John McCain as Richard Nixon. Who'd have thought it?

Wow (none / 0) (#12)
by jarober on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 12:09:08 AM EST

Amazing - utter radio silence on the left about the new Iranian hostage crisis. Probably because facing up to it would require a painful re-evaluation of the left's worldview.

: Uhhh (none / 0) (#16)
by Sailor on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 08:39:31 AM EST

the adults were talking about iraq & obama ... try to keep up.

And obtw on Iran (none / 0) (#13)
by jarober on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 12:12:06 AM EST

The first step does not have to be force - but neither does it have to be groveling. See this for a decent explanation of where things are, and what ought to be done.