Sandhusker
Well-known member
The series of flips continues.... and he he's not even in office yet... :roll:
As President-Elect Barack Obama continues his attempt to dampen public expectations for his first term, we are left wondering if any of his campaign claims will be left standing by the inaugural. Clearly, Obama now realizes that writing checks that his limited abilities and current reality can't cash puts him in a difficult spot, and may lead to public discontent early on in his regime.
Additionally, Obama must have realized that he is no longer sitting at the kiddie table; he's sitting with the adults now and must deal with the real world - not the liberal land of make believe. Now that he is receiving daily briefings on the War on Terror, the realization that he had no idea what he was talking about must be hitting him hard. Or so it would seem, based on last night's interview with Katie Couric.
Couric: How important do you think it is, Mr. President-elect, to apprehend Osama bin Laden?
Mr. Obama: I think that we have to so weaken his infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function. My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America.
However weak his effort (and it is very weak) to make this sound like some unmet goal, there exists within it an admission that his campaign talk was cheap rhetoric. This Huffington Post Headline tells you all you need to know about Obama's campaign: Obama: GOP Tactics The Reason bin Laden Is Still Free And as recently as November, after winning the election, we get the following:
(Obama) said a top priority would be stamping out al-Qaeda and described capturing or killing Osama bin Laden as "critical" to US security.
So during and after his campaign, Obama implies that Bin Laden would be captured or dead if he were President, and calls that a "critical" goal. Less than a week before taking over, the death or capture of Bin Laden really isn't all that important, and we shouldn't really get our hopes up. In fact, as long as he is unable to operate, then security will have been achieved.
What? I guess that's Obama's way of glossing over George W. Bush and the job he's done the last seven years rendering Bin Laden impotent and irrelevant. One could forgive President Bush for responding as Jack Nicholson did in A Few Good Men: "I would rather you just said 'thank you' and went on your way."
As Obama certainly knows by now, Osama (if indeed he is still alive) is not a danger to America in the position he's in. Bin Laden has been discredited in most of the Muslim world and his actions didn't weaken America, they fortified America. Bin Laden's crew is responsible for as many Muslim casualties as Saddam Hussein was.
But P/E Obama is still too interested in playing partisan games to admit that what he claims to be hoping for is exactly what he ripped President Bush for accomplishing.
As President-Elect Barack Obama continues his attempt to dampen public expectations for his first term, we are left wondering if any of his campaign claims will be left standing by the inaugural. Clearly, Obama now realizes that writing checks that his limited abilities and current reality can't cash puts him in a difficult spot, and may lead to public discontent early on in his regime.
Additionally, Obama must have realized that he is no longer sitting at the kiddie table; he's sitting with the adults now and must deal with the real world - not the liberal land of make believe. Now that he is receiving daily briefings on the War on Terror, the realization that he had no idea what he was talking about must be hitting him hard. Or so it would seem, based on last night's interview with Katie Couric.
Couric: How important do you think it is, Mr. President-elect, to apprehend Osama bin Laden?
Mr. Obama: I think that we have to so weaken his infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function. My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America.
However weak his effort (and it is very weak) to make this sound like some unmet goal, there exists within it an admission that his campaign talk was cheap rhetoric. This Huffington Post Headline tells you all you need to know about Obama's campaign: Obama: GOP Tactics The Reason bin Laden Is Still Free And as recently as November, after winning the election, we get the following:
(Obama) said a top priority would be stamping out al-Qaeda and described capturing or killing Osama bin Laden as "critical" to US security.
So during and after his campaign, Obama implies that Bin Laden would be captured or dead if he were President, and calls that a "critical" goal. Less than a week before taking over, the death or capture of Bin Laden really isn't all that important, and we shouldn't really get our hopes up. In fact, as long as he is unable to operate, then security will have been achieved.
What? I guess that's Obama's way of glossing over George W. Bush and the job he's done the last seven years rendering Bin Laden impotent and irrelevant. One could forgive President Bush for responding as Jack Nicholson did in A Few Good Men: "I would rather you just said 'thank you' and went on your way."
As Obama certainly knows by now, Osama (if indeed he is still alive) is not a danger to America in the position he's in. Bin Laden has been discredited in most of the Muslim world and his actions didn't weaken America, they fortified America. Bin Laden's crew is responsible for as many Muslim casualties as Saddam Hussein was.
But P/E Obama is still too interested in playing partisan games to admit that what he claims to be hoping for is exactly what he ripped President Bush for accomplishing.