ABC News took an unusually skeptical look at Barack Obama’s withdrawal plan for Iraq by asking commanders and generals on the ground in Iraq 1) Is it possible to get all those troops and equipment out of there that fast? and 2) What would happen after they left?
These would ostensibly be the kinds of questions Obama would be asking of the same folks when he finally makes it to Iraq some time this summer. He’ll also ostensibly get the same answers from those folks, which means he’ll ostensibly regret his op-ed of today:
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His NYT piece has been parsed and picked already today by many, but my favorite refutation comes from the camo-clad guys in Baghdad. Kudosto ABC reporter Martha Raddatz for framing her questions based on the version of Obama’s plan still available on his website instead of giving him every possible benefit of the doubt his hedging has created:
I’d also advise Obama that naming a foreign policy treatise “My Plan” is probably not the best marketing approach for a Democratic Party still struggling to distance itself from John Kerry’s electoral flameout, which was of course fueled by the perception of him by voters as an impotent internationalist. “My plan,” after all, was Kerry’s oft-used, impotent retort during the second Bush-Kerry debate, which you may remember better as the “Global Test Debate.”
I can see it now, at the McCain-Obama debates: “And I want to talk about my plan some more — I hope we can.”
