How many Obama's are currently in Kabul?
Holy cow, You mean I have been agreeing with an asian. My whole world just changed!
ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports from Capitol Hill: The McCain campaign criticism of Sen. Barack Obama's hearing record on Capitol Hill led us to put the shoe on the other foot.
It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years.
Meanwhile, Obama attended the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan in March 2007, although he used the opportunity to ask Gen. James L. Jones, then the commander of NATO, about Pakistan.
Jones also came before the Senate Armed Services Committee that week. But McCain was a no-show.
The findings are surprising given the fact that the McCain campaign loudly criticized Obama this week for failing to schedule any hearings on Afghanistan in the last year and a half. Obama chairs the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of military operations in Afghanistan.
"As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there," Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a McCain surrogate and ranking member of Obama's subcommittee wrote in a letter to the Illinois senator. "The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban."
Of the three Afghanistan-related hearings that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has had over the past 22 months, Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, has only attended one.
Meanwhile, DeMint, who most recently attacked Obama over Afghanistan, didn't attend any. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, missed one of the Afghanistan hearings too -- while he was in the midst of his own presidential campaign.
A review of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings as listed on the committee Web site for the past two years reveals that McCain's committee has held six hearings that included the word "Afghanistan" in the title or Central Command -- which overseas U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
McCain missed them all.
He missed the hearings with Adm. William Fallon, then the CentCom commander, with authority over Afghanistan, on March 4, 2008, and May 3, 2007.
There was also hearing on June 7, 2007, on the nomination of Gen. Douglas Lute to be the White House war czar with oversight over Afghanistan.
Gen. Jones testified before the Armed Services Committee on Sept. 6, 2007, but that hearing was on Iraq and while McCain showed up late for his opening statement, he was there.
But he missed the hearing on Afghanistan strategy Feb. 14 with representatives from the State Department and Marine Lt. Gen. John Sattler.
He also missed the hearing April, 10, 2008 on the war in Iraq and the "situation in Afghanistan" where Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen both testified.
McCain also missed the Feb. 6, 2008 hearing where the committee considered the fiscal year request for authorizations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But McCain gets a pass for the most egregious Afghanistan-related hearing we could find. In February, 2006 when Republicans were in charge of Congress, Gen. Jones testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and only two senators -- both Republicans -- showed up.
Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., were the only senators who spoke at the hearing. No Biden. No Dodd. No Obama. No DeMint, although to be fair he was not on the committee at that time.
The finger pointing about who attended what hearing when seems besides the point anyways.
Both men have been AWOL from their day jobs for most of the past two years while they are running for president.
Update: McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers, in a statement to ABC News, argued that McCain's years of previous foreign policy experience make up for his recent lack of attendance at hearings.
"The point is that Obama claims to be a leader on Afghanistan, but had the power to hold hearings on our NATO operations there and failed to do so," wrote Rogers in an e-mail, although he did not say why McCain missed his own Armed Services Committee hearings over the past two years.
"John McCain has visited Afghanistan four times, spent 22 years in the military, served for years on the Armed Services Committee, and is a recognized international leader on national security policy," he said. "Obama has never visited Afghanistan once before this week and has no other foreign policy or national security experience to speak of. It isn't even close."
From the above article: "John McCain has visited Afghanistan four times, spent 22 years in the military, served for years on the Armed Services Committee, and is a recognized international leader on national security policy," he said. "Obama has never visited Afghanistan once before this week and has no other foreign policy or national security experience to speak of. It isn't even close."
This is almost too funny to even consider; consider that McCain will follow the Bush doctrine on foreign policy. One only needs to look at our foreign policy before Bush and after Bush; he's destroyed our relationship with not only our friends and allies but also with our enemies. It's not about how much exposure one has, but how they'll direct our foreign policy in the future. Between Obama and McCain, there shouldn't be any question who would be better for our country.
I was reading some information on the people in Obamas organization who will most certianly be in his government if he is elected president and it is as I suspected all along. They are almost all business orientated and we are going to have a business run government. I must admit that even with that view he will be 100 times better than Bush but he has run as a liberal until he had the nomination locked up but now his true beliefs are showing. We have another Clinton running for president, a republican lite, but this time his name is Obama.
H2O_MAN wrote:How many Obama's are currently in Kabul?
How many of Obama's what?
is a contraction for Obama is in Kabul.
rabel22 wrote:I was reading some information on the people in Obamas organization who will most certianly be in his government if he is elected president and it is as I suspected all along. They are almost all business orientated and we are going to have a business run government. I must admit that even with that view he will be 100 times better than Bush but he has run as a liberal until he had the nomination locked up but now his true beliefs are showing. We have another Clinton running for president, a republican lite, but this time his name is Obama.
WTF? You are just discovering this? Try paying attention. If Obama were the Huey Newton the swift-boaters tried to paint hime as, he would never have made it into national political. The hope is that he CAN bring people together.
Roxxxanne wrote:The hope is that he CAN bring people together.
He tends to bring the wrong people together.
There are multiple Obama in Kabul.
H2O wrote: There are multiple Obama in Kabul.
What exactly is your point? That names seem to be duplicated all over the world?
edgarblythe wrote: ...... Obama chairs the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has oversight of military operations in Afghanistan.....
Nice to see that he has finally gone to Europe after all this time, besides London, isn't it? Maybe for political reasons now, not for doing his job up until now, I might add.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/07/18/nevada-gop-cancels-convention-opts-for-conference-call/
July 18, 2008, 6:15 pm
Nevada GOP Cancels Convention, Opts for Conference Call
Brad Haynes reports on the presidential race.
Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call.
The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs, according to local reports.
"With so many people concerned about the economy, it simply wouldn't be fair for us to ask delegates from all over the state to spend money to attend a convention if we know that a quorum won't be present," state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden said in a release.
The news provides further evidence of a fractured and unenthusiastic Republican Party in some parts of the country. Last week, the GOP nominee in a North Carolina congressional race suspended his campaign while he confronted fissures in his own party. Polling suggests a significant "enthusiasm gap" on the part of Republican voters this year, which has left the party's candidate, Sen. John McCain, trailing Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in the presidential contest.
Paul's outsider candidacy, meanwhile, attracted an unexpected seam of support in the party as he stressed strident libertarian themes in his run for the Republican nomination. Although the Texas representative has dropped out of the presidential race, his standard-bearers in Nevada continue to press his cause, hoping to shift the Republican Party toward the libertarian positions he advocated in his campaign.
I'm not going to directly reply to the ignorant written defecation Okie and others post that accuse me of "making everything about race", at the same time the first viable black candidate is making a historic run. Anyone who can't see that race is part and parcel of the the story whether someone "makes something of it" or not, just simply ain't worth the effort.
But I couldn't help but notice (and I predict others will point out in the days to come) that a lot of the photos and films coming back from Afghanistan are overwhelmingly showing black people cheering Obama. I wonder what you guys (who don't think talking about race during the Obama candidacy is some kind of heretical or militant act) think that says?
I think a couple of things are possible. I think it may mean that all of the photos showing overwhelmingly white men in combat roles have something to do with the journalistic discretion of the producers of the films and photos - they show what they feel is their vision of what's really there. It might also have to do with the fact that the NG and AR units that are in war zones have the ethnic makeup of the areas they represent - a unit from North Dakota would be overwhelmingly white; one from a southeastern state might be overrepresented by blacks; of course a unit from Puerto Rico would be latino. that may explain a lot of what we see...
Or, it may be that when Obama is there, the blacks are like me - giddy over the prospect of having him in the white house, and so excited about a chance to see him - and they rush to the places he can be seen faster than do the whites and others, so that it appears that they are the majority there.
In any case, I think the stories so far (knock wood, its early) have been pretty favorable as far as how Obama looks in that setting.
snood, I also believe it's part denial on their part that Obama is doing so great in this race against McCain; a white lightweight who isn't even regarded as a true conservative by many.
Could be, CI. Hey have you been checking out any of those pics coming back from Afghanistan showing the troops?
Saw one in the first page of the local newspaper; most were black in the group with Obama. That can be interpreted in so many ways, I'm not even going to make an attempt, but the message that blacks are interested in this year's election is an understatement.
Butrflynet wrote:
Video of Obama with the troops in Kuwait.
The troops hate the arrogant little prick named Obama.
