I have been going through my stockpile of old episodes “Countdown With Keith Olbermann”. On September 1, 2010 he had an episode in which he talked about a speech President Obama gave on Iraq.
And a lot of Republicans were upset about it. They felt that Obama did not give GWB enough credit for the “surge”.
I think they are all full of dog poop. If GWB had sent more troops in 2003, maybe the insurgency would not have happened and the surge would not have been necessary. Then-Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki pointed out in 2002 that it would take a lot more troops to stabilize Iraq than the GWB administration was sending.
If you pointed out during the insurgency (say, from late 2003 to mid-late 2006) that Shinseki recommended more troops and that maybe that would have prevented problems, conservatives would get very upset. They were for the war, yet against more troops. I think GWB deserves nothing but scorn for the surge. The surge was nothing more but compensating for a mistake made four years earlier. From a guy who never second-guesses himself, no less.
Addition, 2013-09-02_15.47.54: I would also like to point out that many of the same people who got upset in 2003-2005 at the idea that more troops would have solved a lot of problems just looooooooooved to crow from 2008 on that “the surge worked.” How people who claim to have universal, unchanging values can engage in hipocrisy and revisionist history is beyond me.
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