"All Obama is saying is give war a chance" - Iraq war critic didn't mean that sarcastically
Pulitzer Prize Winning Iraq War Critic: 'All Obama Is Saying Is Give War A Chance'
By Noel Sheppard | March 27, 2011 | 17:42
Barack Obama sure is getting support for his Libyan attack from what on the surface would seem a lot of unlikely sources.
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Pulitzer Prize-winning Iraq war critic Tom Ricks told David Gregory, "All Obama is saying is give war a chance" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
DAVID GREGORY: Well, and, Tom Ricks, look, we began the broadcast this morning, Richard Engel's reporting on the progress of the rebels. They're getting closer to Tripoli. Then what? That's the moment we leave? Or are we going to supply the rebels? Are we--I mean, if Gadhafi stays, can we really say this is mission accomplished?
TOM RICKS, CONTRIBUTing EDITOR "FOREIGN POLICY": Yes. I think what they'll say is we gave it a chance. All Obama is saying is give war a chance. Not our war. All we did was kick the door down, let the Brits and the French and the others do it. And I think his notion is we're going to be out of there long before this is resolved. That's the hope. That's the best-case scenario.
For those unfamiliar with Ricks, he is the contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine as well as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a national security think tank with very close ties to the Obama administration.
Ricks used to be a special military correspondent for the Washington Post, and wrote "Fiasco" in 2006 which was highly critical of the Iraq war.
He was staunchly opposed to the 2007 troop surge, and said in 2009, "I think that invading Iraq preemptively on false premises, at the time that we already were at war elsewhere, was probably the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy."
Now, two years later with the United States involved in its third military incursion, Ricks is on "Meet the Press" stating, "All Obama is saying is give war a chance."
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Read more: newsbusters.org
-----------------------------------------------
Obama Regime: Libyan Operation Could Last Months…
weaselzippers.us
------------------------------------------------
"Internationally authorized" and open-ended
Wow. As long as it's "internationally authorized" and not "of vital US national interest," Obama's kinetic whatchamacallit in Libya is a-okay.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:
“It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about. The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not go to Congress?”
“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don't think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”
Which reminds me of this great post from Power Line: His Royal Highness Will Be Pleased to Welcome Your Support! Back to Hillary:
“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.
"A very clearly defined mission"? Even Eugene Robinson isn't buying that.
And apparently Secretary Gates didn't get the memo on the "limited timeframe" spin:
Asked whether he expects the mission to be over by year's end, Gates said, "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that."
punditandpundette.com |
