Without the surge Obama could not visit Baghdad

Jake Tapper:

"Look, the fact is that if Barack Obama's policy on Iraq had been implemented, Barack Obama couldn't go to Iraq today, it wouldn't be safe," Sen. Joe Lieberman, Ind-Conn., told Chris Wallace this morning on "Fox News Sunday."

"Barack Obama, John McCain saw the same difficulty in Iraq," Lieberman argued, "John McCain had the guts to argue against public opinion, to put his whole campaign on the line because, as he says, he'd rather lose an election than lose a war that he thinks is this important to the United States..."

Lieberman continued: "Sen. McCain and I and others want us out of Iraq, sooner rather than later, but want us out in a way that does not compromise all the gains that American and Iraqi forces have made in Iraq ... And frankly, we want to stay there to a victory, because we don't want all those who have served in the American uniform there to have served, or in some cases died, in vain. Remember this, Chris, we wouldn't be having this discussion about how to get out unless the surge, which John McCain courageously fought for, taking on the president of his own party, popular opinion, risking his campaign, and which Sen. Obama opposed, worked. So, that's the good news."

And there's this charge as well: "If Barack Obama's policy in Iraq had been implemented, he couldn't be in Iraq today, is because he was prepared to accept retreat and defeat, and that would mean, today, al Qaeda would be in charge of parts of Iraq, Iranian-backed extremists would be in charge of other parts of Iraq. There'd be civil war and, maybe, even genocide. And the fact is that we are winning in Iraq today. And, you know, you can't choose, as Sen. Obama seems to think, to lose in Iraq so you can win in Afghanistan. The reality is, if we lost in Iraq, which Obama was prepared to do, we -- we would go to Afghanistan as losers."

...

This is pretty much Tapper's full post, but it is mostly Lieberman quotes. Lieberman makes several good points. Obama was not just willing to accept defeat, he aligned himself with the MoveOn wing of the party that was desperate for defeat in Iraq so they could use the defeat and the ensuing disaster as an excuse to argue against the sue of force in the future.

Obama's position that Iraq would have achieved this same result if we had left is just whistling past the graveyard. If he really believes that nonsense then he is truly a threat to our national security.

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