Barack Obama Says We Have Set The Bar To Low

Barack Obama appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the questioning of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Before the questioning Obama had a few things to say about the Bush administration. “I think we should not have had this discussion on 9/11, or 9/10, or 9/12, because I think it perpetuates the notion that the original decision to go into Iraq was directly related to the attacks on 9/11,” Obama said. Then Obama added, “I think that some of the frustration you hear from some of the questioners is that we have now set the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation, to the point where now we just have the levels of intolerable violence that existed in June of 2006 is considered success, and it’s not. This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake. And we are now confronted with the question: How do we clean up the mess and make the best out of a situation in which there are no good options, there are bad options and worse options? And this is not a criticism of either of you gentlemen, this is a criticism of this president and the administration which has set a mission for the military and for our diplomatic forces that is extraordinarily difficult now to achieve.” Then Obama mentioned a comment that President Bush made while in Australia last week. “We have the president in Australia suggesting somehow that we are, as was stated before, kicking A-S-S. How can we have a president making that assessment? And it makes it very difficult then for those of us who would like to join with you in a bipartisan way to figure out how to best move forward to extricate this from the day-to-day politics that infects Washington.” It is ironic that this questioning is happening on 9/11, but what is even more ironic is that a majority of Americans believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq until after the invasion of Iraq, and now it is used as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda. The official reason for the war in Iraq changes with the season. Now they call Iraq a central part of the war on terror, while Osama bin Laden is still making YouTube style videos on al-Qaeda T.V. All this while General Petraeus just wants us to give it a little more time. Obama earlier released a statement in response to the Iraq war report where he said, “Changing the definition of success to stay the course with the wrong policy is the wrong course for our troops and our national security. The time to end the surge and to start bringing our troops home is now – not six months from now. The Iraqi government is not achieving the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge, and in key areas has gone backwards. Our military cannot sustain its current deployments without crippling our ability to respond to contingencies around the world. It’s time for a change of direction that brings our troops home, applies real pressure on the Iraqis to act, surges our diplomacy, and addresses Iraq’s urgent humanitarian crisis. I can only support a policy that begins an immediate removal of our troops from Iraq’s civil war, and initiates a sustained drawdown of our military presence.”
Alan Cosgrove