Obama Time

So we tuned in late to the Presidents speech last night - one of the shortest he's ever made ... it seemed more like a saturday morning radio address than a speech ... and I have to say ... it was uneffectual.

You realized that he was pulling troops out of Iraq, but instead of making it up beat and sounding like we did a good thing to help the Iraqi government take steps to help themselves ... he made it sound like .... a .... defeat.

It felt like we were pulling out and leaving the job undone ... it felt like when we pulled out of Viet-Nam ....

he didn't declare victory
he didnt talk much about all the good we did

he certainly didn't talk about the Iraqi government/military officials who went on the news shows saying that they were worried that they wouldn't be able to handle things there ...

what he did say was that we are shifting our troops to Afghanistan -- the place that was mostly stable until he began to upset the apple-cart again.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the Taliban/Al-queda & the other insurgents try to force their way in ... will the Iraqi government hold their own? will they be overwhelm? will Obama have the guts to put our troops back in if needed? or will we back off and leave them to struggle, possibly leading to the rise of another Saddam or Kadaffi??

I can almost guarenttee that if anything happens in Iraq before the presidential election, he will NOT get in again -- I don't even think the ballot-stuffing would work this time.

oops, excuse me ... the allegid ballot stuffing