Pat Dollard

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I was there, watching firsthand as our troops began putting to together the Sunni Awakening. It was the pressure our troops brought to bear on the Shiites that was a driving force in their demise. And it was our troops that always kept the whole thing from blowing up entirely. Hussein is lower than a pedophile. I’m entirely out of patience.

From the report: “Obama and Petraeus have also staked out opposing positions on whether there should be a timetable for withdrawing American forces.”

And he basically claims that Petraeus, who has just been promoted to oversee both wars and the region, is wrong about Iraq because he’s “there” and has myopia. It’s all so much clearer from D.C. and the campaign trail, apparently.

ABC and The Atlantic:

After meeting with top U.S. military commanders and members of the Iraqi government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., today said his opposition to the surge and support for a firm timetable for the withdrawal of troops hasn’t changed.

Obama is seeing a vastly different Iraq than the one he saw when he last visited more than two years ago. Violence and American casualties are way down, and the streets of Baghdad are bustling again.

So far this month, five U.S. troops have been killed in combat, compared with 78 U.S. deaths last July. Attacks across the country are down more than 80 percent. Still, when asked if knowing what he knows now, he would support the surge, the senator said no.

In an interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, Obama said that he “did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct.”

Moran noted that Obama had claimed that the surge “would not make a significant dent in the violence.”

Responded Obama: “In the violence in Iraq overall, right. So the point that I was making at the time was that the political dynamic was the driving force between that sectarian violence. And we could try to keep a lid on it, but if these underlining dynamic continued to bubble up and explode the way they were, then we would be in a difficult situation. I am glad that in fact those political dynamic shifted at the same time that our troops did outstanding work.”

“But,” asked Moran,”if the country had pursued your policy of withdrawing in the face of this horrific violence, what do you think Iraq would look like now?”

Obama said it would be hard to speculate. “The Sunnis might have made the same decisions at that time. The Shii’as might have made some similar decisions based on political calculation. There was ethnic cleansing in Baghdad that actually took the violence level down,” he said.

Obama also told Moran that there were circumstances under which he could revise his instruction to U.S. generals to begin withdrawing combat brigades at the pace of one-to-two per month.

“I’ve always reserved the right, uh, to say—let’s say that ethnic, uh, ethnic fighting broke out once again—I’ve reserved the right to say—I don’t–I’m not going to stand idly by if genocide is occurring. I’m not going to stand idly by if vital United States interests are at stake. Um, so in that sense yes, I retain the flexibility anyone who in the job of commander in chief is constantly reassessing facts, risks, and so forth.”

“These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult,” he said. “Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with, and one that I continue to disagree with — is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader issues.”

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee met with Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American troops in Iraq, and the architect of the troop surge strategy that Obama has opposed.

Obama and Petraeus have also staked out opposing positions on whether there should be a timetable for withdrawing American forces.

Obama said that in his meeting with Petraeus, the general discussed his “deep concerns” about “a timetable that doesn’t take into account what they anticipate might be a change in conditions.”

“My job is to think about the national security interests as a whole and to weigh and balance risks in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Obama said. “Their job is just to get the job done here, and I completely understand that.