• “The surge is not working,” Obama’s old Iraq plan stated (on website). Daily News, 7/14/08
• "We don't need more spin about how the surge is succeeding in doing what it was supposed to do which is to get the Iraqi's to stand up and take responsibility for their own future, so we can start sending our troops home." Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At a Town Hall, Rapid City, SD, 5/31/08
• "I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province -- Sunni tribes -- who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi'as. We should start negotiating now. That's how you change behavior." Democratic Debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H, 1/5/08
• “So, I think it is fair to say that the president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he's been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed.” Huffington Post Mash-Up: 2007 Democratic on-line debate 9/13/07
• "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse." MSNBC's "Response to the President's Speech On Iraq," 1/10/07

• “So far, I think we have not seen the kind of political reconciliation that’s going to bring about longterm stability in Iraq.” Obama speaks during a news conference at the citadel in Amman, Jordan, Tuesday, 7/22/08
• "But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we've spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq's leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge." Barack Obama, Op-Ed, "My Plan For Iraq," The New York Times, 7/14/08
• "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." Obama For America Website, Accessed 7/3/08
• "The Problem -- The Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war." Obama For America Website, Accessed 7/3/08
• “The overall strategy is failed because we have not seen any change in behavior among Iraq's political leaders. 2007 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Nevada 11/15/07
• “And it is very important at this stage, understanding how badly the president's strategy has failed.” 2007 Democratic primary debate at Dartmouth College 9/27/07
• "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." NBC's "The Today Show," 7/18/07
• "Given the deteriorating situation, it is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve.” NBC's "Meet the Press," 10/22/06

• The Surge has been spectacularly successful in flushing al Qaeda in Iara from their strongholds. Thousands of fighters have been killed or captured.
• US losses in Iraq have fallen dramatically; just five Americans killed in combat in July 2008--the lowest level of a war with historically small casualty rates. There were 66 fatalities in the same month a year ago - and 137 in November 2004.
• Sectarian bloodletting, which was never a "Civil War" no matter the wishful thinking of the Senator or NBC News, has plummeted, with numerous Sunni tribal leaders abandoning their former Al Qaeda allies.
• Shi'ite radical Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army was thoroughly routed by the Iraqi military. This is of enormous significance, as the only way the Coalition, yes the Coalition--SEN Obama arrogantly speaks and makes promises as though the US was the only interested party, can safely disengage is if the Iraqis can defend themselves. Confidence is a tremendous factor in that and this early, yes early--it takes 20 years to build a modern military, success has given the Iraqi forces a critical ego boost.
• Despite the constant refrain form SEN Obama and his proxies, Speaker Pelosi, SEN Reid and others, that there has been no progress by the Iraqis, the Iraqi government has met all but three of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress to demonstrate security, economic progress, and political reconciliation. They likewise ignore the security gains themselves and many instances of Iraqi civilians reporting problems and suspicions to Iraqi and Coalition forces--that kind of bottom up reconciliation may well be more permanent and stronger than any top down imposed reconciliation the government could engineer.
• As for the fiction that Iraq has been a distraction, the wider war against terror has shown significant progress; the number of incidents of terrorism outside Iraq's borders have "in fact gone way down over the past five years," per Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria - and popular support for Islamo-fascist organizations have declined precipitously in the Muslim world.

Labels: election 2008, GWOT, Iraq, Obama