On that “deadline”: “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says Americans should expect a significant U.S. military presence in Afghanistan for two years to four years more. Just as in Iraq, the United States eventually will turn over provinces to local security forces, allowing the United States to bring the number of troops down steadily, according to Mr. Gates.”
Gen. David Petraeus: “In fact, as the secretary explained, this would be a district-by-district, as the conditions obtain, as the security situation is sufficient for the Afghan security forces that will be working hard to develop are capable of taking on those tasks. … And again, there’s no — there’s no time line, no ramp, nothing like that.” He politely sidesteps a direct answer to the question: “General, honestly, would you have preferred no time line to be set publicly?”
Bill Kristol on Copenhagen: “The equivalent of the entire carbon footprint of Morocco is what we’re going to emit into the atmosphere so these guys can get together and talk pointlessly in Copenhagen.”
The voters seem to have other priorities: “For the first time in Gallup’s 25 year history of asking Americans to choose between economic growth and environmental protection, a majority sided with the paper money over the trees. … It’s got to be hard to pass a historic climate change bill when public support for climate change legislation is at historic lows.” Or in the middle of a scandal about just how certain the science is.
Hmm, probably not the best damage-control tactic: “Baucus: Relationship wasn’t an ‘affair.’ ”
Marty Peretz is still waiting for that “new beginning between America and the Muslim World”: “The fact is, as Barack Obama refuses to grasp, Islam needs to shoulder responsibility for what is done in its name. For what is not rejected–in most cases, not at all rejected–by the sages of present-day Islam. Since the president has taken to lecture Americans about ‘one of the world’s great religions,’ which I believe it to be, he might also take to studying why so many of its elders in schools of theology and other authoritative men have embraced, publicly embraced, the gangsters in their midst.”
Really, did you think Obama’s approval and disapproval trend lines would cross in less than a year?
Sen. Ben Nelson seems not to like much of anything about ObamaCare: “He has not only taken an uncompromising position on abortion, demanding stronger language to prohibit federal funding of abortion. He has also voted against every Democratic amendment so far, aside from those that received unanimous support from the body. Nelson’s voting record on the bill suggests a general dislike for key aspects of it.”