http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers.html

If he was a military guy he could make the argument more explicitly that the US forces actually contribute the growth of Al-Qaeda in Iraq without getting smeared. It would be great for some of the military officers supporting him to raise the point. I suspect what Obama’s thinking is if he explicitly makes that obvious argument it’ll be easy to paint him as ‘belittling the efforts and sacrifice of the US troops’ or some crud like that. It’s one thing to say the war was an error and another to say the troops are doing more harm than good. He implies it when he says the troops need to withdraw before Iraqis will make any effort to come together. I don’t like how he’s making the US imperial forces sound less culpable for what’s going on in Iraq either, but he can’t state it too explicity during the campaign, there’s just too many braindead ‘patriots’. Obama definitely knows what’s going on in Iraq, he’s just being politically savvy, which is OK since the end result is the same- withdrawing US troops from Iraq and changing the militaristic mindset in Washington.

The guy gets flack for not wearing a flag pin, what sort of BS would he have to counter if he spoke totally openly about the catastrophic reality of the Iraq invasion and the magnitude of the American governments crimes? He’d be labeled a raving lunatic America-hater and would lose to Hillary or McManiac. The guy is being politically savvy, but not unprincipled IMO, he’s just emphasizing the palatable point of his argument and downplaying the stuff the public won’t accept right now.

I agree with Gareth