Obama visits troops, officials in Afghanistan

Sunday 20th July, 06:01 AM JST

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USARonin at 03:27 AM JST - 20th July

"...the terrorist that... that the Bush regime has failed to find"

Yes, it bugs the hell outta me that Bin Laden can walk around in broad daylight all the time and go anywhere and do anything he pleases.

Not.

USAR
Sarge at 07:40 AM JST - 20th July

Heh, Madverts, we're discussing Senator Obama's visit to Afghanistan and the things he said, which include Iraq, which you also mentioned.

"Obama played basketball with some troops"

I hear he's better at basketball than at bowling. Tee hee!
Statistician at 10:31 AM JST - 20th July

Great to see Obama really in the saddle.
USARonin at 11:16 AM JST - 20th July

"Great to see Obama really in the saddle."

He's a little late to the party, isn't he.

Better late than... no, that doesn't apply on so serious a matter here.

USAR
Bgood41 at 11:52 AM JST - 20th July

I guess Barack Hussein Obama forgot to have a one on one session with the Taliban, after all. It seems like no one else can talk to Iran's dictatorship over the years like Obama. Next stop, Iraq. Come on Obama, go ahead have a session with Amadanijah; it just across the border. Show us your real self, rather than just being a big mouth; and may be A CHANGE WE ALL CAN BELIEVE. Joker needs a lesson from Obama. America deserves better than that.
adaydream at 02:14 PM JST - 20th July

I was watching the news tonight and it must have been hell finding all those leftist soldiers in Afghanistan. They applauded and yelled when he came to speak to the crowd.

It looked at if they were glad to see him.

I bet they are happy that he wants to pull troops out of Iraq and put troops in Afghanistan. They have been waiting since March 2003 for enough reenforcements, but they were diverted to a war of choice. < :-)
SezWho2 at 04:04 PM JST - 20th July

Bgood41,

Ultimately most people get the government they deserve. So, looking at our current government, maybe we deserved this--although a healthy majority now think we deserved better. We may deserve better than Obama, too, but that wouldn't be McCain.

Afghanistan has been the trouble spot all along, not Iraq or Iran. And it has been the trouble spot because of its willingness to provide safe haven to bin-Laden and al-Qaeda. The Taliban are not al-Qaeda, however, and in our zeal to transform Afghanistan into a flowering democracy--instead of, say, poppy fields--we will forget that fact at our own peril.

It seems to me that Obama has been a source of good ideas. His timetable for withdrawal has finally forced Bush to sign on to the idea of timetables. His willingness to talk to Iran has finally forced Bush to do just that.
teaabe at 05:08 PM JST - 20th July

obama won't get elected. ya'll can count the south to do him in.

as for iraqistan, well... the soviets tried it before, too.
Betzee at 11:24 PM JST - 20th July

“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/opinion/20rich.html?hp
Betzee at 11:43 PM JST - 20th July

SezWho,

Our primary system, instead of generating candidates with the best qualifications, begets us the ones who capture the prize by virtue of a well-executed campaign (Obama), or the ones who prevail in a front-loaded selection process (McCain). Just a year ago, it was widely assumed that Rudy Guiliani had a lock on the Republican nom and that he would run against Hillary.

It seems to me that Obama has been a source of good ideas.

He has. McCain is quite scary in how out of it he really is, not the brightest bulb to begin with and age has clearly caught up with him.
SushiSake3 at 12:00 AM JST - 21st July

Betzee - "you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his...."

You're right. Sen. McCain is just one heart murmur away from losing this race.
Bgood41 at 01:12 AM JST - 21st July

Obama runs the campaign on the platform of "better judgement". It took him twenty years to find out about Rev. Wright? Is it about Obama's ego or America's interest? Obama has no vision and understanding about energy policy besides his sweet deal with his Ethernol's backers. The bottom line is the complexity of Islam with their "nouveau rich". You name it (Al Queda,Iraq,Iran,Afghanistan & the middle East) the band aid policy favored by Dems never work. America needs along term goal and through strength to confront this real issue, especially energy independence.
Madverts at 03:32 AM JST - 21st July

"McCain is just one heart murmur away"

One more jab of Botox should help him spring back to life....

...though the facial "bulge" is getting bigger.
Betzee at 03:41 AM JST - 21st July

It took him twenty years to find out about Rev. Wright?

Frank Rich addresses this in his column today:

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s “mental recession,” Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as “almost certainly” the McCain choice for Treasury secretary.....

But no one in the news media seemed to notice Mr. Gramm’s naked expression of the mind-set he’d bring to a McCain White House. And few journalists have vetted the presumptive Treasury secretary’s post-Senate history as an executive at UBS. The stock of that banking giant has lost 70 percent of its value in a year after its reckless adventures in the subprime lending market. It’s now fending off federal investigation for helping the megarich avoid taxes.
SezWho2 at 10:01 AM JST - 21st July

Betzee,

I agree with your comments about the fruits of our electoral system. And, I want to thank you for taking up the gauntlet on the Rev. Wright observation. I think you have made a good tit-for-tat rejoinder.

However, I think that a better answer is that the statement, "It took Obama twenty years...", is a false one. I think Obama always knew that Rev. Wright championed black activism, I think he always knew that Wright had a distrust of a government that was disproportionately run by mostly older white males and I think that he always new that Wright was a social critic of the US and for its unredressed missteps.

What he didn't know--and what no one knew until it became apparent--was that Wright was not sensitive to which of his comments having validity on a local level would not have the same validity on a global level. Comments made to a congregation for the effect of calling attention to a social problem are heard by a larger audience in a different way. I think everyone knows this to be true, but Obama's detractors will ignore this when it serves their purpose.