Posted on 02/27/2009 11:06:37 AM PST by rabscuttle385
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Andrew Ward at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama pledged to remove combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of entering the White House. John McCain, his opponent, strongly disagreed with the imposition of an artificial timetable, saying he would rather lose the presidency than the war.
It is a measure of how much has changed over the past six months that Mr McCain is now one of the chief cheerleaders for Mr Obama’s plan to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq by August 2010.
The former Republican presidential nominee spent most of last year lambasting his White House rival for planning to “cut and run” from Iraq, even claiming that Mr Obama “would rather lose a war than lose a campaign”.
The two former foes were on the same page on Friday, though, after Mr Obama announced his plan to push back his original timetable by three months, removing all combat troops by August 2010. There are now 142,000 US troops in Iraq.
Other Republicans also expressed support for the plan, which would see roughly 50,000 troops remain in Iraq for purposes of training the Iraqi security forces and conducting counter- terrorism operations. But they did so after receiving assurances that Mr Obama would reconsider if violence started to increase.
“The president’s objective to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq is one that we should pray for, plan for, and work toward . . . However, I remain concerned that the security situation in Iraq is fragile, and we should work to mitigate any risks to our troops and their mission,” said John McHugh, the top Republican on the House armed services committee after meeting Mr Obama on Thursday evening.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
WE WON ... what’s left to do for combat troops.
50,000 uniform personnel to remain in Iraq until ....
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What’s the big deal?
Obams’s “plan” is more or less what was going to end up happening any way.
The Iraq War is won, from this point on it can only be lost.
If the generals are cool with it, so am I.
Funny, how I can't recall the Usurper in Chief using the phrase We Won when talking about Iraq.
It knows no bounds or reason.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise the rabid-RINO, John McInsane as much as the next guy.
I’d just rather, in this particular instance, we (loudly and rudely) point out to the Obamites, at every opportunity, the simply AMAZING similarities between this, the latest “Obama Plan” and McCain’s “plan”, and even Bush’s “plan”, for reducing our troop numbers in Iraq.
He's a RINO. He lost the election.
Currently, he's irrelevant.
And it's strategically foolhardy to continually attack the old geezer to the exclusion of the real enemy; Obama.
I intend to keep attacking him until he is no longer in office.
I have a lot of anger to go around and I can certainly spare a bit of it for the “Songbird”.
Apparently NOT! He gets the headlines. He seems to speak for Republicans (according to MSM) And he gone back to being the same asswipe Maverick we all knew he was before the PTB nominated him.
We need to run him into retirement before he does any more damage.
Yep.
McCain is as irrelevant as Snowe, Collins, and Specter.
Two reasons: one, as wolfcreek pointed out, he grabs the headlines and is used as a front by the mainstream media as representative of Republicans, and more generally, conservatives, in much the same way as Lindsey Graham and other RINOs are used; and two, he is still a U.S. Senator. Just because he voted against Porkulus Maximus does not imply that he will always act in a conservative manner.
Dismissing him as "irrelevant" is like saying that Snowe, Specter, Collins, and the other RINOs are "irrelevant." They are "irrelevant" until the mainstream media uses them to destroy the public image and brand of conservatism and until the leftists dupe them into turning on conservatives vis-a-vis amnesty, climate change, Big Government fascism, and "bipartisanship," among other things. Otherwise, your implicit suggestion that we ought to ignore the RINOs in our midst is naught more than plain foolhardiness and stupidity.
Well put. Thank you.
Please ping me if you're going to talk trash about me.
You’ll get no trash from me, brother!
Thank you :)
Likewise.
Exactly. The Bush administration signed an almost identical plan with the Iraqi government last year. Nothing really new here.
But the old geezer is irrelevant, politically.
Let it go.
Take him out in the primary.
Focus on Obama.
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