This is one the sketchiest pics of the Iraq war. Taken before the October 2005 elections, it shows the assassination of an election worker in broad daylight. The assassins don’t even bother to cover their heads. Haunting.
I loved Obama’s speech yesterday, and I generally love Obama. But he’s weak on Iraq. Today he criticized McCain-iac and Hillary on Iraq, saying, “We need a policy rooted in facts and reality.”
Unfortunately, Obama’s Iraq plan was dubbed a “best case scenario” by none other than his former chief foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power. Her comments were made to BBC before she was forced to resign for calling Hillary a “monster”:
He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senate. What he’s actually said, after meting with the generals and meeting with intelligence professionals, is that you – at best case scenario – will be able to withdraw one to two combat brigades each month. That’s what they’re telling him. He will revisit it when he becomes president.
You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan – an operational plan – that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’ It’s a best-case scenario.
What Power says above makes sense. Obama needs to address whether he agrees with Power or if he’s sticking to his unrealistic 16 month promise. These are the facts and realities of Obama’s duplicitous Iraq policy.
TAGS: election, Hillary, Iraq, mccain, NATO, obama, photo of the week, Politics, war
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March 19th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
haunting is the perfect word to describe this picture.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
this is a really crazy photo. thing is, we never see images like this anymore. I’m not saying it as if it’s a thirst for chaos and brutality — but to point out that we only really see embed photos now, and this has sanitized and biased the coverage we’re getting.
Here’s one from the Guardian, a ways back:
http://www.rickv.com/tmp/013.jpg
It’s a set taken by Ghaith Abdul-ahad, who is featured in the book “Unembedded.”
March 20th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Thanks Rick I’m gonna post that.