Obama won WWII too.Europe owes it's freedom to Obama.

What world does this guy live in?

If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and
the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something
positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic
Party’s national security credentials than that.

Maybe Thomas hasn't heard yet being a NYT's columnist and all but the war is over and no thanks to any prominent Democrat, Barack included.There is even a SOFA agreement for a 2011 pullout.All the heavy lifting has been done.The best the world could hope for in regards to Iraq and the Obama reign is that he doesn't try to tinker with it and screw it up.

Bunch of freakin morons.

They vote for authorization to use force to oust Saddam.

They see the intelligence and like everyone else they talk about how bad Saddam is and how his WMD's are there and must be stopped.

They're ok for a couple months in the initial stages beyond the 3 week coalition military vs Saddam's military beatdown.

As things begin to not go so well they start running for the hills working 24/7 to concoct stories of how they didn't vote for the resolution (even those that did) and how it's all wrong and Bush is satan, WMDs were never there, our troops are awful, Bush is satan, Bush is satan.

They continue with this crap thru the end of 2006 when they unanimously confirm General Petraeus, even though they know that his objective is to implement a surge that they abhor and see as completely wrong.  (I ain't no Albert Einstein, but to confirm that General, knowing what he was going to implement, yet they hating it......is illogical to me, and I guess that's the liberal mind.  Perhaps they wanted the surge, not because it would work, but because they were absolutely sure it wouldn't and they could use it to rip Bush yet again on a grand scale).

So the surge begins in early 2007, planning to take several months to get all the pieces in place, yet 3 weeks into it (I remember it because I specifically paid attention to the timeframe), Harry Reid gets up and says "the surge has failed."  They wanted it to fail so badly that they called it and over and done with failure before it even got started.

This went on several months, and then...............the surge began to show progress.

They continued to deny any progress.

When it was too much to deny, they couldn't bring themselves to acknowledge the success, so they focused on what still hadn't happened to a high degree yet.....the political aspect of it.  They harped on how that has failed so the surge has failed.

The primaries came.  Iraq was a hot topic.  The surge, working, never acknowledged as such.  Their statements were all of the theme of withdrawl.....retreat......surrender......handing Iraq over to al Qaeda and Iran.

The surge continued, progress was stunning, it was going better and better.  Democrats were still unable to acknowledge it.  Leaving Iraq was the goal.  Winning was not.  Leaving was "winning."  The Democrats wanted troops out by X date.  Then it was Y date, then Z, then P, then N.  The date changed over and over.  Obama had a date, then he changed.  He wanted to begin withdrawl on day one of a presidency, then he began to talk more about a slow and more controlled withdrawl, still unable to admit that the troops were successfully carrying out a surge.

Iraq was going very well, it was nearly brushed off the table as a campaign issue.  Obama won his nomination.  Democrats still unable to admit surge success.

The economy takes a nose-dive.  Iraq is a complete campaign non-issue.  The messiah wins the election.

It's now less than two months from the messiah taking the Oath of Office.....

......and, as Friedman is speaking of, taking great credit for that which he, the Obama, completely opposed from the start, thru the successful surge, etc, etc.

All those Democrats are cowards.  Politics are first, America is who knows where.  It's all about their power, and on Iraq, they've shown it bigtime, saying one thing, then another, then denying successes when they've come, yet standing on mountaintops to decry failures when those came.  Idiots.  Pure....idiots.  Yet they've watched (and I'm sure studied) the American sheeple's response to their blatant flipping and flopping - that response being....elect them again.  I say they're idiots........perhaps it's ok for them, perhaps their idiocy is unseen by the idiocy of their electorate, and perhaps they know this well.

Obama wins in Iraq - we knew it was coming.. Friedman has sunk to Daily KOS levels, Noel..

3 points can't be repeated enough here:

1. and become a place where Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites can write their own social contract and live together with a modicum of stability,

VP-elect Biden, deeply believed this was not possible and as such proposed dividing Iraq into 3 separate enclaves. Bush stuck to the tunes of "it takes a village," "we can do this together," and "all things are worth it." Obama is not a party to this victory - for these people.

2. Obama... while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow..

Obama, long ago, demanded that we should have left yesterday. Obama has already played his hand here - he left, and lost.

3.  Muslim jihadists — those brave warriors who specialize in killing women and children and defenseless tourists — have turned their attention to softer targets like India.

Thanks Tom for finally taking note of what we all understood, and what the Bush administration has been pounding the table for years now. You didn't want Bush to follow them wherever they went, but you'll follow Obama into the the hotels of India and into the wild wooly mountains of Pakistan to fight the war?

Yeah it makes me sick, I see which way the msm is trying to take this war now, why they will have ticker-tape parades when our troops come home, with O standing tall as they pass by, as if....(you get my drift)

I do not think I can take what I already see happening in the next four years and keep my political sanity.

I see Friedman, I click it.

I despise him, and all his ilk.

Hypocrisy at it's best....in fact outright liars by their previous words and actions.

Matters not now, the majority of sacrifice and hard work is about done...O will get the credit in the msm world, plus so-called historians like like Beschloss and Brinkley...not our military first and foremost, and most certainly not President Bush.

"America isn't the problem...America is the solution." ~ Rush Limbaugh

If Iraq can keep improving — still uncertain — and become a
place where Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites can write their own social
contract and live together with a modicum of stability, it could one
day become a strategic asset for the United States in the post-9/11
effort to promote different politics in the Arab-Muslim world.

Hmmm.
Wasn't that the point, Thomas? Isn't that what the Bush administration
intended from the beginning, and what liberals like Obama have been
fighting against?

Damn Skippy, Noel!

But when it was on Bush's plate, to Democrats it was a disaster that  would turn the whole Arab world against us: remember the vaunted Arab street?

When their messiah comes in, of course Iraq will be the jewel of our mideast policy!  Obama will sweep in after Bush did all the dirty work, and the MSM will hail him as having salvaged what George Bush bungled.

Thanks to Obama? THANKS TO OBAMA???

This makes me so damn mad I could choke this turd of a media whore lefist peice of crap. And that's on a good day.

If you need to lower your blood pressure for few minutes I suggest this very cool video. Trust me, you will love it! The Best Video By A Conservative

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I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart.

What does Friedman base this statement on? Maybe Obama's "extensive foreign policy experience"?. Don't make me laugh.

Obama isn't going to change one damn thing in the Iraq strategy. He's even keeping the Sec. of Defense on in his own administration. The difference will be the media declaring that every new decision, and event will be the result of the absolute masterful genius of The Obama. All good results and positive outcomes will be attributed to The One and his 'best ever Cabinet' while all bad events and setbacks will be attributed to the evil past administration.

Hey, I got the wrong "CHANGE"!

Alan Keyes / Sarah Palin - 2012

I've seen a lot of "squaring of circles" over the years by politicians, lawyers and bias media types but this could be a gold medal winner. But besides the utter nonsense and blatant partisanship, I think it speaks to the broader difference between liberals and conservatives. Whether it's foreign policy or economics, liberals by and large have an amazing inability to see things on a long term basis. Friedman would have more credibility and consistency if he had written "Obama lied, people died".