Obama on O'Reilly

Here's the first part of Obama's interview tonight with Bill O'Reilly. His performance was good for the most part, but I think he takes too defensive a line on the surge. He almost concedes that the surge was a "success." I think it would be better to say he's very pleased that fewer Iraqis and and Americans are dying every day in this unnecessary war, but that the strategy of sending in more troops and paying off former insurgents has not led to a political resolution of the conflict, which was the explicit objective and entire justification set by Bush and McCain. Now McCain still wants to stay in Iraq 50 or 100 years, when the Iraqis and even the Iraqi president have embraced Obama's plans to bring the troops home. It is clear that a political resolution is not going be reached as long as the American troops have no scheduled departure. Yes, McCain has been consistent about Iraq--consistently wrong from day one. He was wrong about going to war, wrong about the surge, and now he's wrong in wanting to keep troops there in harm's way indefinitely.