The push to make Obama admit he was wrong about the surge IS A TRAP.

[Atman]

Not a big one, but remember, they don't have much to work with. But every media outlet is on the "Surge was undeniably successful!" meme, asking over and over again why Obama won't say he was wrong.

Well, we all know exactly what will happen when/if he does exactly that -- BAM -- "HE'S A FLIP-FLOPPER! HE'S INCONSISTENT! HE KEEPS CHANGING HIS POSITION!"

Don't do it , Barack. We all know you did NOT make a mistake, and the surge did NOT work. Here's what I'd suggest instead; sit with Joe Scab and/or every other talking head, and when they demand you admit to making a mistake about the surge, you demand they admit that they made a mistake in not doing a goddamned thing to report on Bush's lying about the war.

.

[cags]

1. Obama is brilliant... He didn't give them the sound bite of himself saying the surge worked but he..

did give the troops credit for reducing violence in Iraq. He knows that sound bite would be played over and over and he played the media like a fiddle. Good on him... I loved it. Katie tried and tried to get that sound bit but he answered her in his own words instead of they way they wanted him to answer.

[Alter Ego]

3. He needs to keep pushing the idea that while the extra troops helped,

we didn't start seeing results until the Sunni militias stopped shooting at us and starting shooting at the insurgents.

[monmouth]

5. I loved how he smacked back at her. I was waiting for him to

say "you've asked me that same question three different ways Katie, my answer is still the same." She was so frustrated....Love it..

[flpoljunkie]

2. Read what CNN's terror expert Peter Bergen had to say about the surge on AC360 recently...

COOPER: Peter, you were just in Iraq, you're in Kabul, Afghanistan right now. McCain says because of the surge, Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run. Is he right and does that and how big an impact is that in terms of overall violence?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I actually think both the Democrats and the Republicans have been overemphasizing the surge. If it was just about the surge, the violence would be back up again because the surge is over. There are some underlying factors that are much more important in Iraq in my view.

One -- the fact that Al Qaeda in Iraq, they basically scored a series of own goals by its Taliban-style tactics, producing this wave of revulsion against and amongst the Sunnis. Now we put up a 100,000 Sunni militia on the American payroll, people who used to be shooting at the United States who are now on our payroll.

We also see the Prime Minister Maliki, no one could say a good thing about him a year and a half ago in Washington. Turning out to be a somewhat effective leader going into Basra, taking out the Shia militias there, going into Sadr City, taking out the Shia militias there.

We've also seen the Iraqi army which, Anderson, is really much larger than the Afghan army and much more effective in a country which is smaller and with a smaller population.

So there were some underlying factors that actually suggest that long- term success in Iraq is plausible. It's possible the surge, of course, was one aspect of it. But to say that the surge caused all these changes is I think simply very simplistic essentially.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0807/15/acd.02.html

[dionysus]

4. .