Posted on 02/14/2007 9:53:12 AM PST by alloysteel
I have good news for everyone offended by the description of Sen. Barack Obama as "articulate." He has quickly shed any claim to that label. Indeed, Obama's remarks this week about American troops killed in Iraq were a bumbling, incoherent mess. You may now refer to him officially as the Inarticulate Barack Obama. (As for judging his current level of cleanliness and brightness, you know that's Joe Biden's milieu.)
At one of his opening presidential campaign events on the Iowa State University campus this weekend, Obama pandered energetically to the anti-war crowd. With his smooth voice rising and thousands of fans goading him on, he proclaimed: "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."
Yes, "wasted." Squandered. Pointless. Down the drain. Meaningless. Video footage of the speech shows Sen. Obama delivering his scripted words carefully and confidently. No umms or ahhs or pauses as he argued that each and every member of the military who volunteered to serve and died in Iraq "wasted" his/her life.
This revealing slip of Obama's tongue and mind -- or "Obamanation," as conservative blogger Scott Johnson at Power Line (powerlineblog.com) calls it -- did not play well among countless service members and their families who actually support their mission and sacrifice. Who repeatedly volunteer to go back even after the war has taken a turn for the worse. Who believe their work enhances their children's and our children's safety. Who risk their lives purposefully and of their own free will. Despite every best effort of the Democrats, media and anti-war movement to infantilize or demonize them, their voices are heard.
Listen to the father of Marine Sgt. Joshua J. Frazier, who was killed by a sniper in Iraq last week on his third tour of duty: "He believed in the United States and believed what he was doing was right. He gave his life for what he thought was the right thing to do," Rick Frazier said.
Remember the words of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, who died in a 2005 firefight in Ramadi: "Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq . . . I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."
Several days after taking flak for his disparaging comments dishonoring such heroism, Obama blubbered about what he really meant.
''I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,'' he told the Des Moines Register. Well, then what dastardly saboteur slipped it into his well-rehearsed stump speech? What supernatural force produced the guttural noise that glided effortlessly from his voicebox through his lips and pronounced the term "wasted"?
"What I would say -- and meant to say -- is that their service hasn't been honored," Obama told The New York Times and other reporters in Nashua, N.H., "because our civilian strategy has not honored their courage and bravery, and we have put them in a situation in which it is hard for them to succeed." As opposed to pulling out precipitously?
Obama offered the standard "sorry-if-I-offended-anyone" disclaimer: " . . . I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.''
Except on the first day of the biggest campaign of his life, that wasn't the starting point. The starting point of his discussion on the troops in Iraq began with the letter "w" and ended with "-asted."
"Even as I said it," Obama claims, "I realized I had misspoken."
So what, one wonders, prevented him from immediately correcting himself there on stage, as thousands cheered the term he now says he immediately regretted?
Words fail.
But man, is he clean, and he speaks well.
I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown.
if if if if..a non-apology apology..
...without any press lackeys following him around.
He has good articulation when he tries rather than being unusually articulate. He would be good on radio except he would have to undergo the Conservative Revelation.
Obama was recent graduate from "The Sen. Joe Biden School of Public Speaking".
I think he was Valedictorian!!
More to come.......I'm sure!!!!!!!!
"It was just a botched joke."
And don't he dress nice.
I like those ears. I would love to stand in the shade of those ears on a hot, sunny day in DC, a day like today where Global Warming is taking its toll.
He comes across as extremely touchy, an odd trait for someone who wants to run for president.
I read that since the slip of the tongue, or just flat out mistake, Obama's speech has been filled with ums and ahs, that he isn't at all articulate if he is speaking extemporaneously. I also read that his record in the Illinois state legislature was not so much a record of anything so much as a record of indecision. He voted present on every controversial piece of legislation that came before him. So, we not only have an inarticulate candidate, we have one that can't make a decision and stand by it.
Every so often a leftist-posing-as-moderate in our Demagogic Party slips up and reveals the vicious hateful core of the American left. Kerry did this with his "botched joke" and now Obama has done this with his "wasted" lives of troops remark. OF COURSE both of these losers believe that since (in their view) the entire Iraq policy is terribly wrong and a disaster, therefore, all lives and resources expended in following it have been "wasted"..... Jon Cary thinks our troops are "stuck" in Iraq while Obama thinks their lives have been "wasted" if they should die in service of their country.
These are common, widespread views of the political left, part of the very air people like Jon Cary and Obama breath every day. That they backpeddle, lie, and dissemble when they are "caught" saying what they really believe is what the media should now focus upon......
Got that right!
Let's just say, he had a "MACACA" moment.
It's only you and your putrid RAT party that has puked all over their sacrifice.
"I like those ears. I would love to stand in the shade of those ears on a hot, sunny day in DC, a day like today where Global Warming is taking its toll.
He comes across as extremely touchy, an odd trait for someone who wants to run for president".
...LOL!! He's touchy because he's an elitist! Just like Jim Webb of VA. He's touchy too. The actual word for both of them would be A--HOLE! Simple.
What we have is yet another piece of evidence that the man is a total fraud, that his entire political career is as much window dressing as John Kerry's Vietnam service. By not voting on anything controversial, he was making sure that there was no vote on his record than can be used against him now.
But he is nice and clean.
Michelle is the only one who seems to have noticed this subject.
The talkshows hardly mentioned it. I guess anything that appears to be an attack or criticism of Obama is just too sensitive.
Is the right just going to hunker down and hope Hillary does all the dirty work?
That's exactly what he was doing. When the reporter asked one of his staff why he had voted present on so many pieces of legislation, the aide said that they were traps, set up by Republicans.
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