Back in January of 2007 current presidential candidate Barack Obama insisted that sending additional troops to Iraq would actually increase sectarian violence. Obama refused to acknowledge the Surges success, even as the evidence was piling up.
Obama said, on January 10, 2007, on MSNBC:
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.--
On January 14, 2007, on Face the Nation, he said:
We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality - we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I dont know any expert on the region or any military officer that Ive spoken to privately that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.--
(What kind of experts was he talking to?)
On March 19, 2007, on the Larry King show, he said:
[E]ven those who are supporting - but heres the thing, Larry - even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.--
On May 25, 2007, in a speech to the Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Obama said:
And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that were on in Iraq is working, I do not.--
On July 18, 2007, on the Today show, he said:
My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.--
On November 11, 2007, two months after General David Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working, Obama doubled down, saying that the administrations new strategy was making the situation in Iraq worse:
Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didnt withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but were actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.--
If we had listened to Barack Obama, all U.S. combat forces would have left Iraq in a phased withdrawal that would have began on May 1, 2007. So the Surge would have been crippled before it fully got off the ground on June 15, 2007.
When Obama introduced a failed piece of legislation entitled, The Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007--, his office had already declared the Surge a failure before it even began.
The Obama plan offers a responsible yet effective alternative to the Presidents failed policy of escalation.--
It brings to mind the ear screeching protests of the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who stated; I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week.-- Reids premature declaration came almost two months before Surge operations would fully get under way.
How can we believe someone who lies so effortlessly as Barack Obama does? There is a long paper trail that documents Obamas continual claims that the Surge would fail to reduce violence and actually make it worse. Then read his more recent statement from January of 2008 in which Obama whitewashed his previous stance;
Now, I had no doubt, and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.--
