A politician lying??? Oh my!!! What a shock!!!!!

President Obama told a whopper of a lie on his speech announcing his plans to drag out the war on Iraq even longer. (Democracy Now! 3/26/09)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As a candidate for president, I made clear my support for a timeline of sixteen months to carry out this drawdown, while pledging to consult closely with our military commanders upon taking office to ensure that we preserve the gains we’ve made and to protect our troops. These consultations are now complete, and I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next eighteen months. So let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31st, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.

The lie at the end of this about the "combat mission" ending by 8/31/10 should be easy to spot and debunk. There is simply no possible way that you can have tens of thousands of US troops occupying Iraq without them getting into combat, even if that were not the intent.

As you might expect, the military knows this and they have come up with a fig leaf. Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service told DN's audience what the actual situation is intended to be.

GARETH PORTER: Well, the evidence of this plan to continue to keep combat brigades in Iraq past the August 31st deadline is very clear from looking into the military planning that has been done with regard to the brigade combat teams, the basic combat organization of the US Army in Iraq for the past six years. So I basically began to talk to some of the people who’ve been close to the military planning, specifically in the US Army, over the past few months. And there’s no secret about this, in fact.

What’s happening is that the basic combat organization in Iraq, the brigade combat team, is going to be slightly revamped by adding a few dozen, perhaps more than that, officers who will be doing the advising and assistance directly with the Iraqi military and police, perhaps some other institutions, as well—it’s not clear—but they will be added on top of the existing brigade combat team, rather than having any fundamental change in the structure of those organizations in Iraq. So, what we have is the same combat potential, same combat organization, which will remain on the ground in Iraq.

Now, there will be some drawdown. There’s no doubt about that. But the promise that President Obama made on February 27th that all combat brigades would be withdrawn from Iraq, that simply is not true. It’s not going to happen.

I remember how the Bush regime fired or pushed into forced retirement generals who opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq (i.e. the honest generals). If Obama is getting resistance to a genuine desire to stop the war on the Iraqi people, he could easily fire General Betrayus and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

People need to reinvigorate the movement to stop the Iraq War. We cannot trust or rely on Barack Obama, just as we cannot trust or rely on any politician.

Photo: jurvetson