Polls show divide on Iraq strategy

Washington Post:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds the country split down the middle between those backing Sen. Barack Obama's 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq and those agreeing with Sen. John McCain's position that events, not timetables, should dictate when troops are withdrawn.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will deliver what his campaign is billing as a "major address" on Iraq tomorrow in Washington, part of an effort to convince voters that he can serve effectively as commander in chief. The public is also evenly divided on that question, with 48 percent saying he would be an effective leader of the military and 48 percent saying he would not.

And on Iraq policy generally, Americans continue to side with Obama and McCain in roughly equal numbers, with 47 percent of those polled saying they trust McCain more to handle the war, and 45 percent having more faith in Obama.

The poll results suggest that months of Democratic attacks on McCain's Iraq position have not dented voters' basic trust in his ability to lead the country's armed forces: Seventy-two percent said McCain would make a good commander-in-chief.

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I think as voters have to focus on how wrong Obama was about the Iraq strategy for the last 18 months they will be reluctant to trust him with national security. The Blunt fact is that he was wrong and McCain was right. The winning strategy that President Bush adopted was close to one McCain had been pushing for several months beforehand. Obama basically adopted President Bush's prior strategy until his friend Tony Rezko lost out on a deal in Kurdistan at which point Obama flip and started becoming a messenger for retreat and defeat.

At some point someone in the mainstream media is going to notice his 2002 position which would have left a genocidal despot and terrorist supporter in charge of Iraq waiting to reconstitute his WMD when the UN and the US left the area changed in 2004 to support the Bush policy..