10 troops die in worst battle of the year.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

there is this little gem from Bush.....

Yeah that was a bad one - the result of Bush's PR folks trying to make him appear down to Earth. In this case it made him look (extremely) gauche - one of the reason that the Obama White House has limited where the press has access to the President (basically at official press conferences).

What will Obama do concerning the war he spoke so supportively about During the Campaign?

He had the answers then, now he is silently idle.

When he is not wowing the Olympic committee... he has Michelle on the town.

So Danno, by your logic, a president is suppose to dedicate 100% of his waking time to solving Afghanistan?

He should have joined the fight - like Bill Pullman's character in Independence Day.

Yeah I was thinking that.

Although it would probably have been more appropriate for Bush to have done that - with his being a trained fighter pilot and all

[almaty 19]

i assume all you armchair generals..have a son or daughter over there and are outraged over the president's behavior?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Its the usual VJ nonsense.

[almaty 19]

yes indeed

[Staashi 371]

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

Yep.. The left complained about Bush going to Camp David all the time, but Obama gets a pass for "fighting" and failing to get the Olympics for Chicago while troops are dying. Meanwhile when the troops are dying in Afghanistan the President decides what the best political strategy will help him in the PR department.

But your hero W was on the job 24/7, never took a minute off in 8 years.

This isn't about W, it's about Obama.

Its about deflection and denial!

It's time for you to send Obama a pink slip. If you simply can't part with your pink slip, any color will do.

He will be put on probation this midterm and FIRED two years after that. Cant wait! I think I should invest in tissue cuz theyll be selling lots

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

You want Bush to be your huckleberry?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

omfg... is this thread for real????????????

What else would you expect from the ususal resident idiots?

Yep.. The left complained about Bush going to Camp David all the time, but Obama gets a pass for "fighting" and failing to get the Olympics for Chicago while troops are dying. Meanwhile when the troops are dying in Afghanistan the President decides what the best political strategy will help him in the PR department.

And while troops have been dying, you've been taking a dump, shopping, eating dinner....

Afghanistan isn't the only thing the President has to think about, you know.

yeah, that war for oil takes precedence!

Bush started that one too. Remember?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

He was right on top of that one too.

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

He was right on top of that one too.

Kinda like eating kreme fresh while deciding on olympic destinations. Oh and yeah I will figure out afghanistan when I get back.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

He was right on top of that one too.

Kinda like eating kreme fresh while deciding on olympic destinations. Oh and yeah I will figure out afghanistan when I get back.

But your boy started both wars and fuсked off during them.

[HYENA 4]

Are we still at war? You mean the congress hasn't cut off the funding? They tried to do that every 3 months when Bush was President. What happened?

The day the war started, a protest started at the top of Church St. in Downtown Burlington. Every day for all those years Bush was in office, there were protesters there everyday. EVERY day, mind you. All with their signs and chants, etc. Now they are gone...I thought they won and the war was over. What happened?

despite the fact that all wars are started by democrats and republicans do the same bidding (Republicans small government? ROFLOL) Dems and repubs are the same. No one had caught on yet? It's not like they're really two different parties....they collude in private all the time; the biggest fleecing people are oblivious to.

Ask yourself why Obama is continuing Bush's policies (just talking differently) but look at the record...he's a bush

REPUBLICRATS!!!!!!!!

That's an excellent term!

What was Bush doing on Sept. 11th?

Or during the Katrina aftermath???

He was right on top of that one too.

Bush=large green #######

[Joseph & Ana 0]

Still running against Bush I see. =failure

[Danno 1,228]

It's Oct 6, 11:00 am

And the General is still waiting to hear what the "Plan" moving forward will be.

Take your time Barry

*The unfortunate thing about being President is... you don't get the option of voting "present" very much.

Obama's brief political life was full of these votes.

Edited October 6, 2009 by Danno

[Joseph & Ana 0]

He's already voting present on the Afghan war.

[Peikko 1,575]

Obama's Afghanistan options: bad, worse and worst

Problem for president is to decide which is which after White House meeting with Republicans and Democrats

Yesterday's White House roundtable on the war in Afghanistan does not sound as if it made the critical choice facing Barack Obama any easier.

The president was able to rule out a rapid drawdown but that was never really on the cards in any case. It was one of the "straw men" Obama hoped to eliminate. The real Afghan dilemma remains.

The Republicans at the meeting sided with the generals and urged the rapid deployment of reinforcements, while the Democrats split between hawks and doves. When the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, told the press afterwards that both parties had told the president that "whatever decision you make, we'll support it", the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, could not hide her bemusement.

"Whether we agreed with it or voted for it remains to be seen when we see what the president puts forth," she said.

There seems little doubt that if Obama does not send the 40,000 troops his military commanders are asking for, the Republicans will portray him as a weak-willed politician letting down American soldiers on the frontline.

A lot of Democrats, meanwhile, are urging the president to learn the lessons of Lyndon Johnson, whose constant escalation of the war in Vietnam ended up draining energy and resources from his domestic "Great Society" programme and killing his presidency.

History is a powerful rhetorical weapon but you can make it prove just about any point you want, according to which slice of history you choose. While the Democrats point to Vietnam, John McCain insists that the surge in Iraq is the more relevant example.

At the heart of the issue is the strategic impact of reinforcements. Those arguing for more troops say their deployment would be a clear signal to the people of Afghanistan that Nato will not allow a Taliban return to power.

That would convince waverers to throw in their lot with Hamid Karzai's government and its foreign backers, as the most likely winners. Furthermore, more troops allow more population centres to be protected, in turn allowing more development aid to flow to those centres, diminishing support for the Taliban and increasing the credibility of the government. Vicious circles would be turned into virtuous ones.

The argument against sending more troops is that the heavier the foreign presence, the more of a stooge the Kabul government will appear in eyes of the people. A bolstered Nato garrison would also shelter Karzai from having to make hard choices and clean up his corrupt administration. He would not have to worry about providing services to his people in order to survive in power. Furthermore, by sending in tens of thousands more soldiers, the US would also appear to endorse the wholesale rigging of the 20 August presidential elections.

Obama is going about the issue the way he has taken most of his big decisions so far, with a thorough and wide-ranging review. But the general he picked to run the Afghan campaign, Stanley McChrystal, is turning the screw by going public with his demands. For that he earned a public rebuke on Monday from the soft-spoken defence secretary, Robert Gates, who called for advice to be given to the president "candidly but privately".

But the cat is already out of the bag, and the president risks being cast as a ditherer. According to the New York Times, the most testy exchange of the White House session came when McCain implied the president was taking a "leisurely" approach to the problem.

"John, I can assure you this won't be leisurely," Obama is said to have replied. "No one feels more urgency to get this right than I do."

With so many lives at stake, it will be a defining decision for Obama, who must be aware that there may be no good options available, only bad, worse and worst.

Link

Obama confronts scepticism over Afghanistan strategy

US president told congressional leaders he remains undecided on whether to raise troop levels

President Barack Obama is confronting division and scepticism within his own party, and accusations of indecision from the opposition Republicans, as he considers calls from the military for an escalation of US forces in Afghanistan and a new strategy to combat the Taliban.

The president told a bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders yesterday that he will not approve a significant reduction in troops in Afghanistan and shift the focus to hunting al-Qaida in Pakistan, as had been urged by his vice-president Joe Biden. But Obama also made it clear that he's resisting attempts to immediately bounce into agreeing to a request by Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal for the swift deployment of up to 40,000 more soldiers alongside a new military and political strategy.

The president told the meeting he remains undecided as he continues a series of discussions with national security advisers and military officials.

But with public support for the war continuing to drop - an Associated Press poll shows that backing for the war has fallen to just 40% of Americans with 57% opposed - Democratic leaders are concerned at the prospect of deeper involvement in a conflict with no end in sight.

The uncertainty has been reinforced by the marking of the eighth anniversary of the US attack on Afghanistan today. It was widely noted that the war has gone on for almost as long as US fighting in Vietnam, albeit with American deaths running in to the hundreds not the tens of thousands.

One of Obama's key allies, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said that the president cannot assume that Democrats will automatically vote for his plans for Afghanistan.

"Whether we agree with it or vote for it remains to be seen when we see what the president puts forth," she said after yesterday's meeting.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the foreign relations committee, said there is still hesitancy among many Democrats in Congress to back deeper involvement in Afghanistan.

"I think a lot of senators and congressmen need to question themselves about how much money they're prepared to put on the table to support that, for how long a period of time and for what strategy," he said.

Other congressional leaders expressed caution over "what the endpoint is".

But other Democrats, including Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate's intelligence committee, and Ike Skelton, head of the House of Representatives' armed services committee, said that the new strategy proposed by McChrystal needs to be given an opportunity to turn the war around.

The Republicans have thrown their weight behind the military. The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said that his party will look to see if McChrystal and General David Petraeus, the head of US central command, approve of the president's plans before offering their own support.

"I can safely say there's widespread feeling in our conference … that we have confidence in General Petraeus and General McChrystal and if they're on board I would think that a significant number of our members would be as well," said McConnell.

Obama's former rival for the presidency, John McCain, urged him not to be too "leisurely" about deciding on the troop deployment, reflecting McChrystal's assessment that it is now a matter of urgency if the US is to gain the upper hand over the Taliban.

A White House official said that Obama responded: "No one feels more urgency to get this right than I do."

According to an official briefing to the US press, the president told the meeting that "he will be rigorous and deliberate, while moving forward with a sense of urgency".

Part of the discussion focused on the government of President Hamid Karzai after the recent fraud-tainted election. McChrystal has warned that alongside a surge in troop numbers there needs to be a concerted effort to establish the government's credibility among ordinary Afghans without which the conflict cannot be won.

After the meeting, McCain said he warned the White House against taking "half measures".

"I'm very convinced that General McChrystal's analysis is not only correct but should be employed as quickly as possible," he said. "The option that's presented by our military commanders in the field endorsed by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff should be given obviously additional weight because they were correct of deploying the strategy that succeeded in Iraq."

McCain's former running mate, Sarah Palin, voiced a populist rightwing view in calling for Obama to be decisive.

"Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision – it is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan," she wrote on her Facebook page.

In part Obama is seeking to clarify what the aims now are of a war launched by his predecessor to topple the Taliban, deny al-Qaida a base and hunt Osama bin Laden.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama is reading Lessons in Disaster, a book about how a former national security adviser of great intellect and reputation, McGeorge Bundy, so badly advised two presidents on the Vietnam war.

Link

I suppose you could spin this as voting present - at a pinch.