President Obama spoke 4,582 words in his prime-time 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 322nd 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's and the 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 ...
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 ....
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....
President Obama is set to grant a blanket pardon shortly to this year's White House turkeys.
But while Obama advised his cabinet Monday to take a little time off this week, presumably to give thanks and watch Detroit lose to Green Bay again, there's a real challenge for the 44th president to discern today: exactly what he should be thankful for. Never mind his slow, steady fade in the polls, matching the slow, steady rise in unemployment.
Although he's not in any election for nearly three more years, Obama's reputation, congressional clout and ability to accomplish pretty much anything is in serious jeopardy come next November's midterms, if not before. Former VP Dick Cheney, who single-handedly reinvented the wonderful Wyoming word "dithering" in recent weeks, is at Obama again (see video below) in no uncertain terms.
Which some might find predictable. But would they expect Arianna Huffington to be openly worrying that the Obama administration just doesn't get it about the economy and jobs? Or how about Leslie Gelb, former New York Times columnist, State and Defense Department official and now president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations?
He's calling Obama's recent Asia trip an unproductive waste of precious presidential time under the headline: "Amateur Hour at the White House."
What's going on here for The One chosen barely a year ago with such widespread hope and....
David Obey came to Congress in 1969, a young Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, opposed to the Vietnam War and mindful of the funding it was draining from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.
"There ain't going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey told ABC News. "If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it."
Comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam, Obey said that both were long-standing civil wars and that, in each case, the United States found itself with an unreliable partner on the ground.
"On the merits, I think it is a mistake to deepen our involvement," Obey said. "But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don't, if we don't pay for it, the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy."
"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey said, "by having a war surtax."
Obey's comments come just as Washington is starting to acknowledge the huge debt laid at its doorstep by recent programs -- including the massive drug-prescription bill and Iraq war costs enacted under the Bush administration as well as the healthcare overhaul and stimulus plans ginned up under Obama.
The current national debt is $12 trillion, and the White House estimates that, by 2019, interest from the debt will top $700 billion a year. As one analyst, Pimco's William Gross, told the New York Times, “What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter. The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: David Obey. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, which will investigate the deadly Ft. Hood shootings, calls them an act of terrorism.
Although some officials, including fellow Democrat President Obama in the early post-shooting hours, have urged caution in characterizing the shocking shootings that caused the deaths of 13 and wounding of 29 on the Texas Army base, Levin tells C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program in a taped interview, "It sure looks like that."
Levin has already been briefed by investigators.
The Ticket has obtained video excerpts (see below) of the cable program to be broadcast Sunday at 7 a.m. Pacific time (10 a.m. Eastern).
Today the man accused of the Nov. 5 killings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, will undergo a pretrial confinement hearing in Killeen, Texas, at his bedside in a heavily guarded hospital room.
The precise schedule for the unusual hearing is unannounced for security reasons, but prosecutors seek a judicial ruling that their existing pretrial confinement is appropriate. They have announced they will seek the death penalty in this case.
On the C-SPAN video, Levin says the Armed Services Committee is undergoing briefings by military investigators and has two more scheduled. When they are completed, he says, he will schedule full Senate committee hearings on the military aspect of the deadly fusillade that broke out on the military base and shocked the nation with soldiers being killed allegedly by another soldier, a Muslim officer.
Americans themselves apparently have mixed feelings over characterizing the rampage as terrorism. A Fox News poll released Friday found that 49% of those interviewed preferred to describe the incident as "a killing spree" and that 44% thought "act of terrorism" was more accurate.
The older the respondent, the more likely he or she was to call it terrorism.
Forty-five percent believe the outburst involved the shooter mentally snapping, and 38% consider him a Muslim extremist protesting American foreign policies.
Levin said his committee would be careful in its hearing to avoid complicating either the military investigation or the upcoming prosecution. But he said he intends to pursue all leads, including such questions as why e-mails between Hasan and a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen were not taken more seriously by federal anti-terrorism investigators who knew of them before Nov. 5.
But even before those hearings, Levin added, "I'm not uncomfortable with thinking that's [terrorism] the likely outcome here and a likely accurate description."
As The Ticket reported earlier today in this space, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder was on the Senate Judiciary Committee hot seat defending his decision to bring the alleged 9/11 terrorist masterminds onto U.S. soil for civilian trials instead of keeping them far away in Guantanamo Bay for a military tribunal.
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, himself a former federal prosecutor, says he's amazed at Holder's simplicity claim and remains unconvinced that such a move, which could make New York City a target for potential new attack, makes any legal sense whatsoever.
Speaking of military tribunals, we went back into the video archives and found this C-SPAN tape below. Holder might want to watch it.
It contains his boss, Barack Obama, a brief member of that same Senate, in 2006 stating that a military tribunal was a perfectly fine way of handling such dangerous individuals asKhalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Obama said the fight against terrorism was "an extraordinarily difficult war" where terrorists could plot undetected from within our own borders.
The freshman Illinois senator was defending a legislative amendment and pointed out that a military tribunal for Mohammed seemed just fine to him.
"The irony of the underlying bill as it's written is that someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is going to get basically a full military trial with all the bells and whistles. He's gonna have counsel. He's gonna be able to present evidence to rebut the government's case.... I think we will convict him. And I think justice will be carried out."
Obama, meanwhile, continued his journeys around Asia and told....
...inquiring reporters that he has never been closer to a strategic decision on what to do next about the deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan.
He also confirmed to Fox News' Major Garrett that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility would not, in fact, be closed by the end of next month as the new president had promised on his first day in office. The latest target is now sometime next year.
In late August the Democratic president received the recommendations of the commanding general in Afghanistan, involving the addition of more U.S. troops to the 68,000 already on the ground from Obama's first troop surge last March.
The general's recommendations reportedly also said that allies had about one year left to save the strategic situation there. Nearly a quarter of that year have passed in deliberations. As The Ticket reported here earlier today, an angry Obama has said that leaks of such contents are firing offenses.
Obama says it might be a few more weeks before he makes his final decision, but that when he did the American people would be clear about it and what his goals were.
As we reported here Tuesday, new polls indicate the American people have moved further along in their decision-making process about the war than the president. And their emerging decision appears to be that the eight-year conflict wasn't and isn't worth the cost.
It was a hearing in which both sides gave as good as they got.
The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, criticized Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. for deciding to hold the trials of alleged 9/11 plotters in New York City, calling the move "dangerous, misguided and unnecessary" because it would put the city at greater risk and give Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the attacks, a platform.
But Holder, noting the long and successful record of New York prosecutors in managing terrorism trials, scoffed at that, insisting that the defendants' "hateful ideologies" will be no louder in civilian court than before a military commission. Noting that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly think the city can be protected during the trial, Holder said:
I have every confidence that the presiding judge will ensure appropriate decorum. And if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed makes the same statements he made in his military commission proceedings, I have every confidence the nation and the world will see him for the coward he is. I'm not scared of what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will have to say at trial, and no one else needs to be either.
The attorney general also took a swipe at the George W. Bush administration, saying, "For eight years justice has been delayed for the 9/11 attacks. No more delay. It is time; it is past time to finally act."
In short, said the attorney general, "we need not cower in the face of this enemy."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images
