President Obama spoke 4,582 words in his primetime Afghanistan war speech at West Point last night.
He said "al Qaeda" 22 times.
He mentioned the "Taliban" 12 times.
And here's how many times the Democratic chief executive used the word "victory" -- 0.
That telling omission says more than anything about Obama's 322d day in office when he gave his first major address as the United States' commander-in-chief.
Through a clever, timely use of leaks late Monday and suggestive advance excerpts Tuesday afternoon, the Obama White House communications team used the public and news media's intense curiosity about his war decisions to steer public attention toward the number of additional American troops he'll dispatch into that war-torn land in the first half of 2010.
That number is 30,000, significantly less than some reported numbers requested by the ground commander. But added to the existing 68,000 there and taken out of context, that would appear....
President Obama's speech on Afghanistan at West Point tonight covered much ground. Here are some key excerpts to digest before bed (U.S. time):
Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause
with Al Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government.
Gradually, the Taliban has begun to take control over swaths of
Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating acts
of terrorism against the Pakistani people.
Throughout this
period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what
they were in Iraq. When I took office, we had just over 32,000
Americans serving in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the
peak of the war....
Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards.
There is no imminent threat of....
Text of President Obama's speech on Afghanistan, Dec. 1, 2009, as provided by the White House
Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan – the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my Administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It is an honor for me to do so here – at West Point – where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country.
To address these issues, it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.
They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.
As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda – a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda’s base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban – a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere.
Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them – an authorization that continues to this day. The vote in the Senate was 98 to 0. The vote in the House was 420 to 1. For the first time in its history, the ....
President Obama's administration is seen as more friendly toward religion than the Democratic Party as a whole, a new Pew poll has found.
Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they view Obama as religion-friendly, while only 29% said they see the Democratic Party that way, according to the poll.
The findings aren't surprising. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama courted religious voters more aggressively than most recent Democratic presidential candidates by putting faith front and center.
In July 2008, during the height of the presidential race, then-Sen. Obama pledged to expand a controversial White House program that gives federal grants to churches and small community groups.
Later that summer, during a forum at evangelical Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, Obama, who is Christian, spoke of "walking humbly with our God" and quoted from the Gospel of Matthew.
It paid off.
Forty-three percent of voters who said they attend church weekly chose Obama over Republican John McCain, according to the National Election Pool exit survey, a change from recent election trends, in which religious voters overwhelmingly chose Republican candidates. Among occasional worshipers, Obama won 57% of the vote.
The Pew poll found that the Republican Party is still seen as friendlier toward religion than either Obama or the Dems. Forty-eight percent of those polled viewed the GOP as friendly toward religion.
The poll, which was conducted in August by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, also asked people about their views of the news media, scientists and Hollywood related to religion.
Fourteen percent of voters said they view the news media as friendly toward religion, and 12% said they view scientists that way. Only 11% said they see Hollywood as friendly toward religion.
-- Kate Linthicum
For a heads up on other nifty polls, and an alert for every new Ticket item, follow us on Twitter.
Photo: Then-Sen. Obama, left, appears at a forum in August 2008 with Pastor Rick Warren at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Warren led the invocation at Obama's inauguration in January. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
Tuesday nights on American television, the largest crowd this fall has been watching the detectives of NCIS solve criminal dilemmas.
Tonight, President Obama attempts to solve the nation's strategic dilemma over Afghanistan and his political dilemma over what he's about to do about the nation's military dilemma in Afghanistan.
Presidential speeches from the Oval Office are usually around 15 minutes long. And there are no applause lines because there's no one there to applaud.
Which is why Obama will devote today to phoning foreign allies to "consult" about his decisions, which is White House for "tell." Obama will then break the news to congressional leaders. Because Capitol Hill leaks worse than the Titanic after the iceberg brush, Obama will wait to do that until this afternoon to minimize leaking time.
Then, Obama will fly up to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to speak for....
Catching Up: An amazing story out of Iraq over the holiday with likely domestic political repercussions, involving another possible case of political correctness gone awry:
Three Navy SEAL commandos, who recently captured one of the most-wanted terrorists in Iraq, are now being charged criminally by the Navy for giving the terrorist a bloody lip.
The captive is Ahmed Hasim Abed, who was codenamed "Objective Amber." He's the alleged mastermind of the capture, mutilation and deaths of four Blackwater security guards in 2004 (see photo above).
After patiently tracking the suspect and capturing him, the SEALs turned the prisoner over to Iraqi authorities in September. He then complained of being punched at some point. He was returned to U.S. custody, resulting in....
In a cover profile with posed photos and everything (highly coveted in places called Washington), the New York Times Magazine reports that, after only 321 days in office, Joe Biden, who was a senator when Barack Obama was only a sixth-grader, has already possibly become the second-most-powerful vice president in the nation's entire 85,469-day history.
You might be wondering who was the most powerful vice president in U.S. history.
No, not Hannibal Hamlin.
We hesitate to publish the name of the most powerful vice president in American history because Biden called him the most dangerous VP in American history and commenters here get so excited about him, one way or another, even though he's related to Obama.
Also, as is well-known by conspiracy theorists (you know who you are), since our corporate parent is a charter member of the MSM, we are (secretly) prohibited from saying anything positive about Hamlin's Grand Old Party or anything even slightly mocking about the current Democratic administration that has so successfully turned the U.S. economy around so quickly. And all, amazingly, without incurring new deficits or lobbyists. And only a few hundred billion in new taxes and cuts.
So we'll just say that Biden is the most powerful vice president in the last 321 days. You figure it out.
The New York Times Magazine, not widely known for understated satire, is only the latest of....
Of course, it's easier if you're not doing any of the cooking yourself. Or turkey carving. Or serving.
So President Obama only had about 50 folks over to the White House for Thanksgiving dinner tonight. During the day the president called 10 military members around the world to wish them a happy holiday.
If you've just consumed your own feast, though, maybe save and read this later. If you're still on the appetizers, go ahead and peruse what's coming in the next two paragraphs.
Here, according to the White House, is what the president had for Thanksgiving dinner:
Turkey and honey-baked ham and cornbread stuffing and oyster stuffing and greens and macaroni and cheese and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and banana cream pie and pumpkin pie and apple pie and sweet potato pie and huckleberry pie and cherry pie.
We are told, Washington style for background, that the president's favorite items are the turkey and pumpkin pie.
Hopefully, Obama has some presidential Pepcid on hand and the commander in chief will be out of the gastronomic coma in time for his 40-minute Tuesday evening speech on Afghanistan from West Point.
On Thanksgiving, our most home-grown of holidays, we at The Ticket would like to offer you a helping of history along with that turkey.
We call it the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past. It's a collection of some of the more interesting presidential proclamations relating to the holiday.
Most schoolchildren in this country know that the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621, when the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians feasted together to celebrate the burgeoning colony's first successful harvest.
But it wasn't a national holiday until 1863, when, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November 1863:
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that...
If you thought "Going Rogue" would be the end of Sarah Palin's written rants, you probably don't follow the former Alaskan governor's fan page on Facebook.
The Republican has been blogging like crazy recently with her 1.07 million Facebook fans. (See new video below of the campaign-like scenes.) And getting thousands of comments back.
In addition to pictures from her "Going Rogue" book tour -- of happy children, grinning U.S. troops and flags of the American variety -- Palin gives a more personal look behind her many interviews and individual visits with fans and customers.
According to a new industry sales report, her book is coming up on half a million copies sold in its first five days on the market, a sales rate of about 4,000 per hour around the clock. Which ought to keep her in moose chili a while.
Her Facebook page also has some touching photos of memorabilia that fans give her when buying the book. Plus, of course, the long lines of eager book-buyers at stores and malls along the way on her strategically planned 25-state tour.
Also behind-the-scenes looks at her unscheduled visit with the Rev. Billy Graham.
Her legions of Facebook fans are growing by a couple of dozen every few minutes. They grow each time you refresh the page.
In one recent post, the Republican calls Fox News' Sean Hannity "a great American." Oh, and an apology for leaving 100 fans at a book signing in Indiana.
But the main focus of her blog posts lately has been about Congress -- things like war spending and "Obamacare," her pet name for the healthcare bill.
Palin blasts the healthcare "scheme" for taxing everyone starting next year. The actual legislation, however, plans to ramp up taxes in 2011 and on a sliding scale, where richer residents are taxed more and the modestly wealthy get a 0.5% hike.
On Tuesday night, Palin was bothered over "liberal Congressional proposals" that would institute a tax to fund the war in Afghanistan. Palin supports the war and the troops but not the idea of paying for it with new taxes.
"With Congress and President Obama spending money on everything at breakneck speed, it’s interesting that they are only now getting nervous about ...
... spending," Palin writes, "but only when it comes to providing the necessary funds to complete our mission in Afghanistan."
This qualm about the government proposing taxes on war and nothing else comes less than a week after she complained about the government proposing taxes on healthcare.
The early-stage war tax proposal called the "Share the Sacrifice Act," which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she may support, would fund a U.S. troop escalation in Afghanistan that Rep. David Obey estimates will cost $1 trillion over 10 years. [Note: An earlier version of this post called Obey a senator.]
That would buy a lot of books.
(Update: Palin, whose father was her high school track coach, has now Twittered to followers that she's leaving the book promotion trail over the Thanksgiving holiday to travel to Kennewick, Wash., for a 5K Red Cross charity run with numerous relatives before a book appearance Sunday in nearby Richland.)
