Obama Wasted

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks during a campaign stop at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire February 12, 2007. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES)


Barack Obama isn't such a golden boy after all.

A little of his luster has been lost, if you're paying attention and if you value the sacrifice of our troops in Iraq.

The lib media aren't dwelling on this. In fact, I'd say they're downplaying it.

You have to listen to what Obama says. You can't get caught up in the Obama-Mania.

AMES, Iowa -- A day after jumping into the presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama began the courting of Iowa party activists Sunday with a blistering critique of the war in Iraq.

More than 6,000 people who came to hear him at the Iowa State University campus saved their biggest cheers for his criticism of the war.

"We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted," Obama said.

What a horrible choice of words from the articulate Obama!

Then again, maybe it wasn't. Perhaps the truth came out.

Maybe Obama truly believes that the American troops who gave their lives in service to our country were WASTED.

I'd like Obama to say those same words to the families of the fallen.

"Your son's life was wasted."

That would have a much different impact than when he said it in front of the cheering throngs in Iowa.

True, Obama has apologized for his "poor choice of words."

OK.

How would he have rephrased his remarks to make them more acceptable?

"We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans ______.

Fill in the blank.

What would be a proper choice of words?

The fact is Obama believes that the deaths of these brave Americans were a waste and their mission was a mistake.

There are two possibilities:

1. Obama meant what he said, that American lives have been WASTED in Iraq.

2. Obama isn't as articulate as he's made out to be.

I don't know. It's a tough call.

He's certainly no Abraham Lincoln.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

--ABRAHAM LINCOLN

_______________________________

UPDATE--

From The New York Times, "Obama Restructures a Remark on Deaths:"

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois said Monday that he had misspoken when he suggested that the lives of more than 3,000 American soldiers killed in Iraq had been “wasted.”

As he arrived in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama said he would “absolutely apologize” to military families if (emphasis mine) they were offended by a remark he made in Iowa while criticizing the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

“What I would say — and meant to say — is that their service hasn’t been honored,” Mr. Obama told reporters in Nashua, N.H., “because our civilian strategy has not honored their courage and bravery, and we have put them in a situation in which it is hard for them to succeed.”

Obama "restructures" his remark.

Good grief.

Blah, blah, blah, Oblahma.