Obama and the War in Iraq

I found a really good article from The Wall Street Journal on Obama and his political stance with the War in Iraq. His website used to state this on the surge:

“The problem – the Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq’s political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq’s civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq’s political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.”

Well, this is no longer posted on his website. Was it maybe because he has become better informed on the situation there? Did he receive information like this:

Earlier this month, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad reported that the Iraqi government had met 15 of the 18 political benchmarks set for it in 2006. The Sunni bloc in Iraq’s parliament is returning to the government after a year’s absence. Levels of sectarian violence have held steady for months – at zero. (In January 2007, Mr. Obama had predicted on MSNBC that the surge would not only fail to curb sectarian violence, but would “do the reverse.”) If this isn’t sufficient evidence of “genuine political accommodation,” we’d like to know what, in his judgment, is.

Iraq is finally getting that kind of government is precisely because of the surge, which neutralized al Qaeda and gave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the running room to confront Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shiite Mahdi Army. And the reason the U.S. can now contemplate more troop withdrawals is because the surge has created the conditions that mean the U.S. would not be leaving a security vacuum. On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki’s government assumed security responsibility in yet another province, meaning a majority of provinces are now under full Iraqi control.

Did you know that one year ago Iraq only hit 8 of the 15 benchmarks? Today Iraqi soldiers took up positions on rooftops and military helicopters hovered overhead in a show of strength in a Baghdad district where Shiite militiamen once ruled the streets. There were no reports of violence. Iraqi officials, in a sign of growing confidence as violence decreases, have pressed the United States to agree to a specific timeline to withdraw U.S. forces.

Oh, and one other thing. It’s always a bad thing when a soldier does die but here is a statistic for you:

Since war began (3/19/03): There have been 4122 American casualties, 3357 of them were in combat. Did you know that during WWII from December 7, 1941-September 2, 1945 American’s suffered 418,5000 casualties? This was the last great era of our country, now we’re just a bunch of whiny ass little brats.

Read the full story.

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