On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Tom Brokaw reminded Mr. Obama that on the day the surge strategy was announced, he had said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse."
To which Mr. Obama responded: "I know that there's that little snippet you ran, but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence."
But Mr. Obama often said the surge would make the violence in Iraq worse, most recently in November 2007, two months after there was a substantial dropoff in violence. Mr. Obama said then: "Not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."
It wasn't until a Democratic debate on Jan. 5 of this year that Mr. Obama acknowledged violence was diminishing: "I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence," he said.
But Mr. Obama had said precisely the opposite at the time, and for six months thereafter. What he did in the "Meet the Press" interview, Mr. Wehner said, "is to provide a misleading answer to a previously dishonest answer, in an effort to cover up his spectacularly wrong prediction."
A man who admits no mistakes is very different from a man who makes no mistakes.
www.post-gazette.com
Whatever ... accept that we have won, while all predictions have not been in the ball park -- this type of "nuance" (or what I call bull sh*tting) is going to get very tiring very soon.
