Obama's Iraq flip-flops

Richard Fernandez:

Barack Obama’s position on Iraq has shifted significantly over the last six years. What is interesting is how his position on Iraq matches up with developments in Chicago. Specifically, there appears to be a direct correlation between the rising and falling prospects of his longtime friend and fundraiser Tony Rezko’s attempts to secure multi-million-dollar contracts to build and operate a power plant in Kurdish Iraq and the senator’s Iraq flip-flops.

On October 2, 2002, Obama gave a speech categorically opposing an invasion of Iraq. He said:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

But on April 5, 2004, Barack Obama appeared to significantly alter his position on Iraq. A YouTube video of Obama shows the incredulity on the interviewer’s face as Obama unexpectedly sounded almost like President Bush on the subject of retaining troops in Iraq.

Interviewer: But you said that troops should be withdrawn.

Obama: No, no. I’ve never said that troops should be withdrawn. What I’ve said is that we’ve got to make sure that we secure and execute the rebuilding and reconstruction process effectively and properly and I don’t think we should have an artificial deadline when to do that. What’s important is that we have a long-term plan in process and short-term security strategy.

It’s been suggested that that change in the senator’s position from opposition to a stern refusal to leave until the job had been finished can be explained by the unexpected ease with which the campaign had gone up till that time. But that doesn’t quite square with the facts. April 2004 was in fact the bloodiest month in the Iraq campaign till then and the start of the Sunni insurgency and Moqtada al-Sadr’s uprising. On March 31, 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a Blackwater convoy and hung the mutilated bodies of the Americans on the bridge....

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But Rezko Watch, a blog following the trial of the Chicago political operative and Obama’s close friend and contributor Tony Rezko, remembered that something else took place in April 2004. Obama was at a party on April 3 — two days before the video– with Nadhmi Auchi, a London-based Iraqi billionaire who attended a Tony Rezko party in Chicago....

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The meeting with Auchi takes on a special suggestiveness in light of later revelations that Rezko planned to build a $150 million Chamchamal Power Plant in Kurdish Iraq despite the fact he had no resources to do it with. According to John Batchelor, the former Obama supporter’s straitened circumstances at the time he was bidding for the project came up during the discovery proceedings at his recent trial....

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But if Rezko had no money to build or finance the Chamchamal Power Project, how could he convince the Iraqi government to give him a letter of credit and where would the “other financing” come from? Subsequent events suggest the letter of credit would be arranged by another local connection, a Chicago Iraqi-American named Aiham Alsammarae, who is a one-time classmate of Tony Rezko and had been appointed as Iraq’s Minister of Electricity by L. Paul Bremer in July 2003. With Alsammarae at the head of the ministry, a letter of credit was possible. The money (”other financing”) would likely come from Nahdmi Auchi, who according to the Times Online, practically owned Tony Rezko.

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What had changed between June and November 2006 to alter Obama’s position? Possibly the situation on the ground. But one circumstance that had also changed was that the Rezko Chamchamal contract had been finally and irrevocably canceled only two weeks before. John Batchelor reports what Rezko told the judge during the discovery proceedings:

We had, for whatever it’s worth, sometime in June received a letter saying the contract was canceled. We protested the cancellation. And, then, we received this [the November cancellation] letter.

Batchelor describes some of the last-minute efforts to bring the Rezko power plant project back from the dead.

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There is much more in this piece that should be picked up by the mainstream media including the AP which will either try to charge or any excerpts or not pay for any it makes. The correlation of facts and the flip-flops appears to be more than a coincidence.

The disagreement over whether Obama met with Auchi is really not that important to the narrative. I tend to think he met him, but found it inconvenient to remember it. What is really important is how Auchi fit into the Rezko schemes and how those schemes appear to have shaped Obama's attitude toward what we should do in Iraq.

If you don't see the coincidence then Bill Clinton has a word or two for you. "Give me a break." Those are the words Clinton used to challenge Obama's position that he had been consistent in his opposition to the war.