one of the raps against Obama is that he`s never bucked any part of the liberal base and he`s doing it right now.

I'll tell you, I have never read such twisting in my life. Mental distress is when some poor woman just has a bad day.

There is nothing he can say that is going to turn those people away from him. I can understand the ones who say there is no good alternative (McCain), but the ones who try to justify his every word amaze me.

"I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago or when I was a United States senator," said Obama, who is still a senator from Illinois.

Via Jake Tapper:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

And here's more from the wayback machine:

On a conference call with reporters earlier Friday Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Obama has been "crystal clear with the American people that if and when he is elected president, we will be out of Iraq in - as he said, the time frame would be about 16 months at the most where you withdraw troops. There should be no confusion about that with absolute clarity."

....

Clinton decried comments Samantha Power made about Obama's Iraq policy, saying she was "told about something that one of Senator Obama's top foreign policy aides told the BBC recently about Iraq."

"While Senator Obama campaigns on his plan to end the war, his top advisors tell people abroad that he will not rely on his own plan should he become president. This is the latest example of promising the American people one thing on the campaign trail and telling people in other countries another. We saw this with NAFTA as well," Clinton said.

"He has attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date and now we learn that he doesn't have one -- in fact he doesn't have a plan at all according to his top foreign policy adviser," she said. "He keeps telling people one thing while his campaign tells people abroad something else I'm not sure what the American people should believe but I would refer you to the BBC interview in which the top foreign policy adviser is speaking about senator Obama and Iraq," Clinton said.

And still more:

GIBSON: And, Senator Obama, your campaign manager, David Plouffe, said, "When he is" -- this is talking about you -- "When he is elected president, we will be out of Iraq in 16 months at the most. There should be no confusion about that."

So you'd give the same rock-hard pledge, that no matter what the military commanders said, you would give the order to bring them home?

OBAMA: Because the commander-in-chief sets the mission, Charlie.

That's not the role of the generals.

And one of the things that's been interesting about the president's approach lately has been to say, "Well, I'm just taking cues from General Petraeus."

Well, the president sets the mission. The general and our troops carry out that mission. And, unfortunately, we have had a bad mission set by our civilian leadership, which our military has performed brilliantly. But it is time for us to set a strategy that is going to make the American people safer.

Now, I will always listen to our commanders on the ground with respect to tactics, once I've given them a new mission, that we are going to proceed deliberately, in an orderly fashion, out of Iraq, and we are going to have our combat troops out. We will not have permanent bases there.

Look, even if Obama elsewhere said somewhat more equivocal stuff, it doesn't get around statements like those assembled here, whose clear intent is to lead people to believe that his commitment to getting all combat troops out in 16 months was something you could count on.

Now, of course, having won the Democratic nomination and having fooled many voters into believing he will get all combat troops out within 16 months, he wants to "refine" his views with impunity, and is shocked, shocked, that anyone might think there was some real deception going on.

HARWOOD: No, it is not a problem for Barack Obama. This is one of those things that sounds like a problem, but if you really look at it, getting attacked from the left on national security issues is good news for Barack Obama, because it tells mainstream voters that he`s not out on the far extreme and helps him counteract the attacks he`s getting from John McCain and the Republicans.