What's on your mind?

Our history is full of Presidents either using the military or depending on the military to try to manipulate public opinion right before both Presidential and mid-term Congressional elections.

As one example Lincoln himself believed he'd not be re-elected, but Sherman's capturing of Atlanta a month before election day changed the tenor of the election.

history of the diarist.

I don't know that I agree with all the assumptions the diarist has made.

I do know that there is merit to the argument that actions to decrease the impact of the Iraq war before the GE gets underway in the fall is predictable based on years of experience. There will be more 'good news' from the White House and the GOP before the election, and more reports of 'threats to National Security'.

The GOP has always had an 'October Surprise',and if the Democrats didn't, any action that could plausibly be morphed into one suddenly becomes a 'wag the dog' scenario.

These are things that history and experience teach us.

Scoff at that if you feel you must.

The Bush administration will absolutely do as much as possible to help McCain in this fashion. We will see the news focus from Iraq improve to match reality, we may actually even see Bin Laden caught this time. Scare tactics are SOOOO 2006, this year we'll see what I like to call "Things that Bush was supposed to be doing the whole time".

Which is why it is so important to make news like this irrelevant by focusing on the simple fact that although staying in Iraq will help IRAQ and can help us win THERE, it won't do jack shit in the war on terror or to help make us safer. And that is what Obama has been doing. WTF is he going to be saying on this issue? All he can say is, "We can't afford it, we're wasting manpower, military is stretched, nuclear threat". Not only that, but if the reason for staying in Iraq is so that Iran can't get a foothold, that's really stupid, because they are literally next door. We would have to be there training and pumping in money for at least another 10 years before we'd keep Iran's money from being sufficient to buy influence and pay for dissidents. Iraq is the second biggest oil producer in the world.

But seriously, screw this Chicken Little philosophy, because it's completely counterproductive. You complain, but you don't offer any better alternatives. I'm inclined to think you don't actually WANT to talk to anyone, only broadcast. Nonetheless, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. So my question to you is, what is he supposed to be saying instead of what he IS saying?

The Bush Administration has claimed troop reductions are about to happen for the last 7 years.

Nevermind the fact that McCain and Bush have been campaigning against the troop withdrawls because their friends' money is tied up in keeping us in Iraq as long as possible.

Normally I would've been more skeptical about the sudden requests by Iraq to get us the hell out of there, but the Republican line on it is so muddled and their message is so unclear that it seems almost impossible for this to have been arranged.

In fact, unless this was all arranged so that some catastrophe can befall Iraq that tells us that we need to be there forever, Obama has been on the winning side of this latest break.

Reality seems to have a pro-Obama bias.  It was a nice try, though.