The following is with much thanks to Abu Wabu, to which there is much more there to read… but this is the bottom line:
More from WABU:
With all the commentary that will follow from the MSM about the splendor of Obama’s decision, let’s remember all the baseless, despicable scorn, lies, character assassination and slanders Obama and his fellow Senate Democrats heaped on General Petraeus during the hearings on the Surge, a plan they all said wouldn’t work and for which they called him a liar for even suggesting it would.
Rather than burnishing Barack Hussein Obama’s presidential cred – he has none – all this whole affair has done, at this point, is prove once again what a bunch of lying sacks of shit the Democrats were in their attacks on Petraeaus and the military at the outset of the final surge and rescue of Iraq. Obama, Durbin, Reid, Biden, Clinton, Kennedy, Dodd, Kerry, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Levin, Schumer, Frank, all of them, from top to bottom. It had failed before it had even begun, they said; the war was lost, and only a lying Bush military lackey like Petraeus would try to suggest otherwise. And today it is proven once and for all that it was all politics, for nothing but their own benefit, regardless of the cost to the country, its military and its image around the world, all of which they were prepared to sacrifice on the altar of political power.
[….]
Remember, for Obama, even the prospect of genocide in Iraq was not enough to merit taking down Saddam, and he proudly declared in the Surge hearings that he never supported the rescue of Iraq.
So Obama has never had any use for a genuine national hero like General Petraeus. Until now.
WIKI notes:
- The MoveOn.org ad controversy began when the U.S. anti-war liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in The New York Times on September 10, 2007, accusing General David H. Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House”. The ad also labeled him “General Betray Us”. The organization created the ad in response to Petraeus’ Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. MoveOn hosted pages on its website about the ad and their reasons behind it from 2007 to June 23, 2010. On June 23, 2010, after President Obama nominated General Petraeus to be the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan (taking over the position from retiring General Stanley McChrystal), MoveOn erased these webpages and any reference to them from its website.
Victor Davis Hanson via NATIONAL REVIEW:
- It is one of the ironies of our present warped climate that Petraeus will face far less criticism from the media and politicians than during 2007–8 (there will be no more “General Betray Us” ads or “suspension of disbelief” ridicule), because his success this time will reflect well on Obama rather than George Bush. It is a further irony that Obama is surging with Petraeus despite not long ago declaring that such a strategy and such a commander were failures in Iraq. And it is an even further irony that he is now rightly calling for “common purpose” when — again not long ago, at a critical juncture in Iraq — Obama himself, for partisan purposes on the campaign trail, had no interest in the common purpose of military success in Iraq.
And George Will via NEW YORK POST:
…Less than three months after the Times excoriated the court for weakening issue-ad restrictions, the paper made a huge and patently illegal contribution to MoveOn’s issue-advocacy ad. The American Conservative Union filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, noting that the purchaser of the ad, MoveOn Political Action, is a registered multicandidate political committee regulated by the mare’s nest of federal laws and rules the multiplication of which has so gladdened the Times.
The Times, a media corporation that is a fountain of detailed editorial instructions about how the rest of the world should conduct its business, seems confused about how it conducts its own. The Times now says the appropriate rate for MoveOn’s full-page ad should have been $142,000, a far cry from the $65,000 the group paid. So the discount of $77,000 constitutes a large soft-money contribution to a federally regulated political committee. The Times’ horror of such contributions was expressed in its enthusiasm for McCain-Feingold.
FEC regulations state: “The provision of any goods or services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for such goods or services is a contribution.” Individuals are limited to contributing $5,000 in a calendar year; corporations such as the Times can make no contributions.
MoveOn is going to send the Times a check for $77,000. The Times has apologized, which is sweet, but normally the FEC doesn’t accept apologies in lieu of fines. And often FEC fines are levied after intrusive investigations into motives and intentions. Will there be such an investigation of the Times? The FEC is not lenient when dealing with individuals who, less lawyered-up than The New York Times Co., fall afoul of regulations much more recondite than the bright line the Times ignored.
Bob Bauer, a Democratic lawyer specializing in laws regulating political speech, notes – not approvingly – that the Times supposedly has a policy of rejecting ads involving “personal attack” speech. But the Times accepted MoveOn’s ad accusing a soldier of betraying his country. According to the Times’ public editor, a Times official said the ad was “a comment on a public official’s management of his office.”….
IRAQ HEARINGS: Sen. Clinton Questions Gen. Petraeus