"Obama visits injured troops at Walter Reed facility
WASHINGTON — President Obama met privately yesterday with wounded US soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The president’s unannounced visit occurred a day before the nation marks a formal end to its combat operations in Iraq. The president will travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, today to thank soldiers for their service in Iraq before returning to Washington to address the nation from the Oval Office....
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"Pushing onward to other battles; Iraq drawdown shifts US focus, Obama says; ties economic recovery to ending Afghan war" by Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | September 1, 2010
WASHINGTON — President Obama told the nation last night that the United States must now focus on shoring up the deeply troubled Afghan government and rebuilding its own battered economy....
You could have focused on the economy anytime; instead we have received 21 months of stimulooted failure.
Obama said, announcing that combat operations have come to a close:
“The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people.’’
I read that and I am so offended by the arrogance.
We invaded and are occupying the place over lies, we shattered the infrastructure and failed to rebuild it, murdered millions of Iraqis in the process, displaced millions more, littered the place with radioactive debris, and then he acts as if they didn't already have a nation and we somehow gave them a future.
Yeah, the people of the United States have payed a heavy price, but Obama and his war-looting Washington pals all made out great on these wars. Think that has anything to do with them not stopping?
The 18-minute speech — the second Oval Office address of his presidency — at several points linked the cost of the two wars with the federal government’s record budget deficits and the financial struggles of millions of ordinary Americans, who Obama said have been “shortchanged.’’ He said the drawdown in Iraq will provide the resources for a successful conclusion to the nearly 10-year-old war in Afghanistan and eventually jumpstart the US economy.
Notice how the ECONOMY is LAST on the LIST?
Obama spoke of propelling growth in the US economy with the same urgency he used in discussing the military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What was he waiting for?
“We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs,’’ he said. “This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.’’
I'm sorry, but this slick salesman of a president is really distasteful.
Obama, who built his first presidential campaign partially on his fierce opposition to the war in Iraq, recounted the painful saga of one of America’s longest wars.
Nothing like REWRITING the HISTORY of the CAMPAIGN!
The MSM over here thinks WE DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING!
I did NOT SEE Obama out there PROTESTING, did you?
Seven years of fighting has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and at least 4,416 US service members and has cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Yeah, THANKS for LYING US INTO the PLACE, MSM!
Related:
The number of Iraqis killed by the surge alone was around 300 per day, 10,000 per month -- with 1.2 million Iraqis dead since the invasion (must be nearly TWO MILLION by now).
Related: Story Iraq: MSM Lied About Death Tolls
Memory Hole: 600,000 DEAD!
Occupation Iraq: One Million Dead Iraqis
Despite recent progress, a host of challenges remain, he observed.
Aren't you sick of hearing you have made progress after seven years of losing, America?
The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein has been replaced by Iraqi leaders who are still wrangling over who should run the country after a close parliament election in March. The wave of ethnic and sectarian killings unleashed in Iraq has largely died away, but suicide attacks still rock major cities.
Yeah, the SADDAM TIMES must seem like the SALAD DAYS for IRAQIS now!
And WE CALLED it LIBERATION!
“It is still going to be 10 or 20 years before Iraq is normalized,’’ Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida’ie, said in a recent interview. “Before it has reliable rule of law, before the police are functioning professionally and cleanly, before we have a government that goes beyond sectarianism.’’
Then THIS WAR-CRIMINAL INVASION was a FAILURE!
Obama called on Iraqi leaders to urgently form their new government. Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed that call, saying in a statement that “the bickering and log-rolling must end.’’
Who is he to talk considering the s***-stained town where he works?
In recounting the US efforts in Iraq, Obama did not blame President Bush for starting the war based on misguided claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction, nor did he credit him with the 2007 surge of US troops that is widely seen as having stemmed the tide of civil war there.
This is the FIERCE OPPONENT of the WAR, huh?
And I'm sorry, but the SURGE FAILED! It was ALSO to set the stage for POLITICAL RECONCILIATION and you can SEE WHERE WE ARE!
But NONE of that matters to the s***-shoveling MSM -- just as the "misguided claims" of WMD are somehow FORGOTTEN (save for that small sentence)!
But Obama praised Bush as a patriot and said he had spoken on the telephone to the former president earlier in the day.
“It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset,’’ Obama said. “Yet, no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops or his love of country.’’
Translation: Obama is now part of the brood.
That's why his regime engineered 9/11, huh, 'bomber?
That's what all the Iraq lies were for?
Love of country?
Republicans sought to highlight the drawdown as Bush’s accomplishment....
White House officials were careful yesterday to characterize the announcement of the end of combat operations in Iraq as more of a symbolic milestone than a sea change....
I don't know about you; however, I HAVE F***ING HAD IT with SYMBOLISM!!
Just a FANCY WORD for BULLSHIT!!!
Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi-born political analyst who works with the American Friends Service Committee, an antiwar Quaker group, said the US presence in Iraq is so unpopular that it would be “political suicide’’ for a politician to ask for US troops to remain.
But they will anyway.
And the Globe finally discovered an antiwar voice, huh?
“There was a time in 2003 that many Iraqis were hopeful that the US intervention would end up making the country into a better place, but not now,’’ Jarrar said. “Most people view what happened as a disaster.’’
And Obama and the MSM called it a VICTORY!
But he said that if Iraqi leaders break the political stalemate and form a government, Iraqis might eventually temper their criticism of the US invasion.
You can keep on hoping, war criminal press.
Related: Occupation Iraq: Iraqi Indictment of AmeriKa's Occupation
And we are trying to call that victory?
“If the next Iraqi government is indeed a functioning government that represents the will of the Iraqi people . . . and if the US leaves completely as promised, I think the entire evaluation of the US intervention will be viewed very differently,’’ he said.
At the time of the US-led invasion in March 2003, 71 percent of Americans thought it was the right decision, while 22 percent said it was wrong, according to Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center.
Yeah, and BECAUSE of the LIES you will NEVER SEE THAT MUCH SUPPORT for a WAR HERE AGAIN!!
I hope it was WORTH IT, a**hole MSM!
Now polls show that just over 40 percent of Americans think it was the right thing to do, even as security there improves, he said.
Yeah, IGNORE the UPTICK in VIOLENCE, 'kay?
“There is still a lot of skepticism about the decision to go to war in the first place,’’ Doherty said.
Yeah, but LET'S NOT DWELL on that!!
Last night, Obama praised Iraqi security forces for plotting a series of successful operations against Al Qaeda in Iraq. He also used soaring language to praise US soldiers, offering assurances that their sacrifices were worth it.
“We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people, a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born,’’ he said.
He is REALLY a SICKENING INDIVIDUAL!!
Why is EACH PRESIDENT WORSE than the LAST ONE?
Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University who lost a son in Iraq, said that “Americans aren’t ready to confront the reality’’ that the war has stretched the US military, and the US Treasury, to its brink.
“If we did reflect on all that has been lost in Iraq, and compared that to the little that has been gained, it would become that much harder for the president to sustain popular support for Obama’s war in Afghanistan,’’ he said.
What popular support for Afghanistan?
Yeah, thanks for that, too, MSM.
Bacevich said the Iraq war should teach Americans the limits of their military power.
I LEARNED THAT LESSON a LONG TIME AGO!
But Obama said Americans will continue to lead the world into the next century, although he said US leadership will be based on economic innovation as well as a strong military.
So WHERE is the NEXT WAR, sir?
“Our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home,’’ he said....
Which is why he is presiding over a declining and collapsing carcass of an empire.
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Occupation Iraq: New Day Dawning
Yeah, what's in a name?
So WHERE are we GOING NEXT?
"Next for Obama: push for peace in Mideast" by Ben Feller, Associated Press | August 31, 2010
WASHINGTON — Tonight, Obama’s emphasis will be to thank the troops and explain why the fight goes on in Afghanistan and beyond — and not so much about the potential for Iraq to be “a beacon of liberty in the Middle East’’ as President George W. Bush put it....
Yup, Iraq in the rearview mirror.
Watch for the coverage to precipitously decline here.
Much depends on whether Iraq’s leaders can form a lasting government, whether Iran will seek to exert added influence with a smaller US presence in Iraq, and whether the United States will be perceived as the country that responsibly turned power back to Iraq or the one that left before the job was done.
No, we wrecked the place as planned.
And you see who is next, right?
For now, a presidential speech about the changing of the US mission in Iraq is as close to closure as the people of the United States will get.
Does this mean anything to you, American people, because that is what the Obama is flipping you.
All troops will not come home until the end of 2011 at the latest.
And more will be coming back in a box the longer we stay.
The United States will still keep tens of thousands in a dangerous Iraq for support and counterterrorism missions in the meantime. More Americans are likely to die....
But the COMBAT is OVER because OBAMA nd the MSM say so!
The United States, too, is still absorbed with a widening war in Afghanistan, the base for the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
I'm tired of the bloody shirt being waved by the lying MSM, aren't you?
That conflict began in 2001, even before the Iraq war. Obama’s stand is that the Iraq war, at a costly price, distracted from the cause in Afghanistan.
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