Tag: Obama

Update: Best line of Obama's speech: "Freedom is More Powerful Than Fear."

Shorter version: No boots on the ground (with a moving definition of what constitutes boots -- boots now seems limited to hand to hand combat, not troops on ground.) "What we should not do" is allow ourselves to "be drawn into long and costly ground war in Syria and Iraq."

We can expect more kill missions (whatever happened to the capture part? It seems gone.) Asks Congress to pass authorization for use of force against ISIS. Just a few references to assault rifles. Asks Congress to pass a bill preventing those on the no-fly list from buying them. We can't stop every mass killer but we can make it harder for them to kill.

President Obama was on Jimmy Kimmel last night. Both were very funny and entertaining.

Obama did get serious for a few minutes, when he talked about Ferguson, the two officers who were shot, the protesters, racial profiling and the DOJ report. [More...]

President Obama wants Congress to fund his request for additional training and weapons in Iraq. What will he have to give up to get it, from those in Congress and at the Pentagon who think his plan isn't hawkish enough? Without Congressional approval, apparently there will be no funding for arming and training since executive authority doesn't cover that. That may not be easy:

Some Democrats have said they’re concerned that U.S. forces will become mired in ground combat in Iraq, despite Obama’s pledge that won’t happen. Some Republicans say Obama should take more aggressive action, such as moving more quickly to arm non-Islamic State rebels in Syria and enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria near the Turkish border.

From news reports, it sounds like Obama is under pressure to modify his "Iraq first" policy, under which helping the rebels fight Assad takes a back seat to defeating ISIS in Iraq. Obama is asking his advisers to review U.S. policy on Syria. But the two cited unnamed sources seem to say different things:
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President Obama addressed the U.N. today. Here is the full text of his remarks.

Update: The White House just issued this Fact Statement on its plan to fight ISIS. DOD Secretary Chuck Hagel released this (non-reassuring) statement.

Update: Why Obama's Strategy Has No Chance of Success. See also, Juan Cole.

Update: I think this was a mostly emotional speech. I also think it was risky to be so insulting to ISIS, when they are still holding so many Western hostages, including a female American aid worker.

I disagree with Obama that our years of efforts have been successful in Yemen and Somalia. We took out a few leaders, so what? They just appoint new ones. (It's no different than our ineffective approach to the drug cartels.) AQAP and al-Shabbab have not been diminished. The state of affairs in Yemen and Somalia ranges from unstable to chaotic. Al Qaida central just opened a new branch in the Indian sub-continent.

Obama's strategy has no timeline, he gave no indication of what would be considered a "success" so we would have an end point. I don't even think he referenced the Peshmerga or Turkey as a coalition partner. He said we would work to shut off the point of entry for recruits, but how, if Turkey isn't part of the effort? [More...]

President Obama will outline the U.S. response to ISIS in a speech on Wednesday. Today on Meet the Press:

“What I want people to understand is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum” of the militants, he said. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We’re going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately, we’re going to defeat them.”

Although Obama said there would be a “military element” to the strategy, he added that “this is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops."

He also said he regrets golfing after the James Foley beheading as it had the "wrong optics." You can watch his interview on the Meet the Press website.

Here is the transcript of President Obama's remarks today on the Yazidis, ISIS and Ferguson.

He said air strikes would continue in Iraq, but maintains there will be no boots on the ground.

Wherever we have capabilities and we can carry out effective missions like the one we carried out on Mount Sinjar without committing combat troops on the ground, we obviously feel a great urge to provide some humanitarian relief to the situation.

On Ferguson, he said the FBI will investigate the death of Michael Brown. As to last night's violence, he said while there are differing accounts: [More...]

Hour and half later and we're almost in to see Obama in Aurora. 30,000 people. This is insane.

— Andrew Emerton (@andwoo) November 5, 2012

Update: 10:45: President Obama has arrived. More at the bottom of the thread.

Update: Live stream here, Dave Matthews is singing. 10:25 p.m: The President's plane has touched down. Turnout: 20,000 supporters

The line to see President Obama tonight at the Community College of Aurora – Lowry Campus began hours ago and quickly grew to over a mile long according to CBS News4 Colorado -- some say 1.5 miles. President Obama is not scheduled to speak until 10:25 pm, and may be a little late since he left Cincinnati late. Dave Matthews will perform a solo acoustic set.

President Obama laid out his second-term agenda in an off the record conversation with the Des Moines Register, which his campaign provided to the paper today with permission to publish. He says he will get immigration reform done in 2013. The full transcript is here.

"The second thing I'm confident we'll get done next year is immigration reform," Mr. Obama told the newspaper. "And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon.

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In a poll of 521 uncommitted voters conducted immediately after the final presidential debate, 53% of these said President Obama was the winner, 23% think Romney won, another 24% feel the debate was a tie.

Mitt's Pinocchio moment: The Apology Tour whopper. Washington Post: "Every fact checker has said the so-called ‘apology tour” did not happen. Here is the Fact Checker’s look at the 4-Pinocchio claim." [More...]

The third and final debate is about to begin. The New York Times says voters don't really care about foreign policy, they are looking for leadership qualities.

In polls this year, voters have practically screamed at the top of their lungs how little they care about foreign policy. In recent polls of three battleground states, Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin, fewer than 10 percent of voters in each state said national security was the most important issue to them, ranking below the economy, deficit and health care.

On NBC just now, in between the Mitt Romney ads tonight, there was a great ad in support of Amendment 64 and the legalization of marijuana.

And here we go, updates below.

One hour from now, the second debate begins between President Obama and Mitt Romney. It's a town hall, will someone ask about marijuana? Will it be the only thing they agree on all night, that it must stay illegal, or will one or both pander for the youth vote and pretend they aren't dead set against it?

Which Obama will we see tonight? Hopefully not the professor.

Here's an open thread for your thoughts before it begins.