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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (653155)	4/29/2012 10:55:07 AM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1578538

Pubic is FIXATED on Mitt Romney.

To: puborectalis who wrote (653155)	4/29/2012 11:06:11 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1578538

ssassination President Obama is trying to use the hit on Osama Bin Laden as a campaign point, but the fact is - as the CIA memo above shows - that he had very little to do with it (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News). The narrative that we have been told since May 1, 2011 is that President Obama made the call to kill bin Laden, with one aide even going so far as to say President Obama's action was " one of the ... gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory." The White House has run with this, milking bin Laden's death for everything its worth. It's even to the point where if go to " gutsycall.com," your browser will automatically direct you to barackobama.com. Honestly, if the final decisions were up to President Obama, and no other President would have even considered carrying out the raid that killed bin Laden, the President should have the right to use bin Laden's death any way he sees fit. The problem is that the so-called "gutsy call" never existed. Putting aside the fact that any President with Mr. Obama's intelligence information would have made the same call, a new memo released yesterday that Mr. Obama did not make the "final" call, nor was it terribly gutsy. Instead, it shows that the President merely authorized the possibility for going to Abbottabad... and left everything else up to Admiral William McRaven.

To: puborectalis who wrote (653155)	4/29/2012 11:15:18 AM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1578538

Biden said romney is out of touch. the guy who voted against the first Iraq war, that guy the guy who advise Obama not to kill OBL, that guy Joe Biden prides himself on his foreign policy experience, but one can't help but look at the scoreboard of foreign policy decisions Biden has gotten utterly wrong over the last 20 years. Over the weekend, the lovably salty vice president confessed to advising President Obama not to order the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound because there wasn't absolute proof that the Al Qaeda leader was in the Abbottabad residence. "Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go." Biden reenacted for an audience at a congressional retreat. Surely, no one should fault a leader for hesitating over a commando raid that posed such significant risks to everyone involved. And it certainly took guts to admit the flawed decision in public (even if he was just trying to make his boss look good). But it was also a reminder that he may want to downplay the foreign policy aspect of his political biography. The Persian Gulf War In 1991, Biden voted against the successful Gulf War though most historians now believe it was a well-executed, agile use of American power. According to a report in The New York Times back then, Biden "scorned the other members of the anti-Iraq coalition" because they saddled the U.S. with most of the hard sacrifices. Weapons of mass destruction Biden's biography on the White House website touts his credentials as a former chairman or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who's been "at the forefront of issues and legislation related to ... weapons of mass destruction." Scott Ritter, the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq prior to the invasion, probably wouldn't agree. In 2002, Ritter said "Sen. Joe Biden is running a sham hearing. It is clear that Biden and most of the Congressional leadership have pre-ordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein from power regardless of the facts, and are using these hearings to provide political cover for a massive military attack on Iraq." The Iraq War Biden voted for the Iraq invasion of 2003. He has since said it was a mistake to invade the country. Carving up Iraq In 2006. he made a full-on push to carve Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions, saying the idea that the Iraqi people would unite behind a strong central government was "fundamentally and fatally flawed." The jury is still out on whether Iraqis can rally behind a central government but it's safe to say that he's no longer pressing for a soft partition while inside the Obama White House. The last time Biden spoke with a reporter about the 2006 plan was last year when he said he approved of how the Iraqis were distributing power. "They're in negotiations right now to figure out how to allocate the power within that government. In other words, share power," he told Jake Tapper. The bin Laden raid You can see his remarks in the clip below, courtesy CNN: In 2010, these foreign policy "shortcomings," shall we say, did not go unnoticed by The New York Times, which quoted Foreign Policy writer Thomas Ricks posing a rather blunt question. “When was the last time Biden was right about anything?” We wouldn't go quite that far (he was right about the Balkans!) but it's certainly not a record to hang your hat on. Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at jhudson@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.