It was very good to see this in the Obama interview. O'Reilly gave credit to Obama for being wise enough to realize this beforehand. Meanwhile McCain will probably never realize this and condemn our country to continue to make major errors like this. One can argue whether it was the 30,000 extra troops of the Surge, putting 100,000 sunni or our payroll as security guards, SAdr's decision to order the Mahdi Army to stop fighting, (probably encouraged by Iran) the ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad leading to less day to day killing. At best the surge slightly mitigates the horrible disaster that is the Iraq War and that is still not certain. AS in Yugoslavia there could easily be a bloodbath once American occupation is over. I view this admission by O'Reilly as a major shift by Murdoch and Fox News as a major defeat for the neo-cons. It is important to crush their ideology of US world domination which leads to frequent wars and a bloated military. Without such a defeat we cannot address our myriad problems at home. Can't have it all. The price of the Iraq War was in the range of what it would take to alternative energy
unfortunately, mccain and palin still think this is a "war" we're fighting that can be justified as "winning." there is no more winning when this was a mistake. there can be fixing, but no winning.
Shouldn't this be in the Obama/O'eilly interview thread? Anyway, I heard O'Reilly's radio show yesterday. He said the the "battlefield" was the mistake, not the "war". Here's the transcript from the surge part of the interview: On the Surge O’Reilly: I think history will show that Iraq was the wrong battlefield, and I think you were perspicacious on your original assessment of the battlefield. Obama: I appreciate that. O’Reilly: I think that you were desperately wrong on the surge, and I think you should admit that to America. … We have defeated the terrorists, we have taken control of the southern region… by the surge, which you did not support, so why won’t you say, I was right in the beginning, I was wrong about that. Obama: I think that there is no doubt that the violence is down. … I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that no one expected, including President Bush and the other supporters … partly because of the ****e awakening. O’Reilly: If it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge. Obama: Well, look… O’Reilly: If it were up to you, there wouldn’t have been a surge. Obama: No, no, no, no. O’Reilly: You and Joe Biden, no surge. Obama: Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had been through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous, and the president wanted to double down and continue on an open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility that they needed to reconcile. O’Reilly: But it worked. Obama: Well, look. Uh, uh. Bill, what I’ve said is–I’ve already said–is it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. O’Reilly: So why can’t you say you were right in the beginning, but you were wrong now? Obama: Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We’ve reduced the violence, but the Iraqis haven’t taken responsibility. http://mitchellblatt.com/blog/2008/09/barackobama-appears-on-oreilly
So we were supposed to fight the Iraqis in a different battlefield..? Lets ask the Iraqis to go to Afghanistan and then we'll fight em I guess.
I hate a throw water on anybody's happy dance, but O'Reilly has been saying that for quite some time.
This is true, although he's not shouting it from the rooftops as loud as he helped beat the drums of war during the initial invasion though.
I get what Bill is saying here, and I totally understand he just wants the answer, but what I see Obama saying is that there would've never been a need for the surge had the massive mistakes throughout the war been handled differently in the first place and make no mistake, Bush had plenty of opportunities to not only plan differently but strategize differently with advice from generals that they pulled off the operation and so on because they didnt want to follow the plan as is. They were told to add more troops in the very beginning and didn't do it, so Bill is just looking for his answer here but he's also choosing to ignore those things. Yes the surge worked as they both agree, but it was only needed in that manner because of idiotic decisions in the first place.
Yes he did, but he did also say that he would admit it was a mistake if it turned out to be that, and he did. As far as the history will judge he has been saying that from the beginning too
Whoa! Obama cursed during the show? Not very presidential, but I do like it for a bumper sticker. **** Awakens! It's better than **** Happens, and closer to "The Dude Abides." ps -- yes, I know what he said.
