Still better than McCain's plan

By Libby

If it hadn't come on the heels of his cave-in on FISA, I probably wouldn't have had this gut wrenching moment of pause when I read the headline, Obama open to refine Iraq withdrawal plan. It made me a bit nervous to hear he said he would reconsider his options after talking to the commanders on the ground during his upcoming Congressional fact-finding tour to Iraq. We all know how those have turned out in the past. The politicians come home after being subjected to the Pentagon dog and pony show, convinced that everything is rosy and by God, we'll win this thing if we just stay a little longer.

However, in reading the post I see it's not really the walkback I feared, at least so far and tying it to the overall efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran makes the rhetoric more palatable to me. The Republicans are trying to paint it as a sharp reversal but in fact, it's not a huge departure from his previous statements, as he points out to the media.

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I’ve said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe,” he said. “I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.”

His foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, elaborates on that point.

"But he has said over and over again we have to be as careful getting out as George Bush was careless getting in. So he will redeploy our forces responsibly, at a rate that our commanders say is safe and sustainable."

I've never believed either Obama or Hillary when they claimed they would immediately wihdraw the troops anyway, much as I would prefer that outcome. It's just not that simple. Leaving will be more difficult than invading certainly and I have to agree with TPM. "These [statements] strike me as less a signal of a coming change in his position on withdrawal and more like a combined effort to defuse the charge that he'll withdraw recklessly and to preserve flexibility as commander in chief."

In any event, his position is still lights years better than McCain's 100 year occupation plan. Nothing would be more disastrous than that.