MSNBC has a live poll to grade Obama's performance as President
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/
I find the results so far very surprising, but then again where would Bush have stood in the same poll after 70 days in office?
MSNBC has a live poll to grade Obama's performance as President
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/
I find the results so far very surprising, but then again where would Bush have stood in the same poll after 70 days in office?
MSNBC has a live poll to grade Obama's performance as President
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/
As to the poll, it is an on line poll. It is a curiosity, nothing more. I wouldn't attach any significance to it.
So as I agree with you that SJP is pompous does that require me to remove him from my friend list ? It still does not mean he is wrong..
Speaking of pompous, I never hear you reply to my fact based links about the US pulling out of Iraq ? hummmmmmmmmm
As to the poll, it is an on line poll. It is a curiosity, nothing more. I wouldn't attach any significance to it.
SirFrancis2004; I never hear you reply to my fact based links about the US pulling out of Iraq ? hummmmmmmmmm[/quote said:Obama says he will pull combatroops from Iraq by August 2010. So will it happen?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/obama.troops/index.html
Not as accurate as the ones you use. hmmmmm
Not accurate at all, ironsides. I would put zero credibility in any on line poll. The sample is self selecting, the poll is vulnerable to spamming by a small but determined group and its reliability is nonexistent.
On line polls are just a curiosity, nothing more.
Obama says he will pull combatroops from Iraq by August 2010. So will it happen?
[URL="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/obama.troops/index.html"]http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/obama.troops/index.html[/URL]
Well Francis had a fact based list so... you know... hmmm... well its a list... and it's fact based...so he has to pull troops out now...
Doesn't he?
President Obama told congressional leaders Thursday he's planning to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010, according to three congressional officials.
President Obama says he plans to keep up to 50,000 support troops in Iraq after combat troops leave in 2010.
President Obama says he plans to keep up to 50,000 support troops in Iraq after combat troops leave in 2010.
Under this scenario, all combat troops will be withdrawn within 19 months of Obama's January inauguration, three months longer than his promise on the campaign trail.
In a meeting at the White House Thursday evening, Obama also told lawmakers that he plans to keep a range of 35,000 to 50,000 support troops on the ground in Iraq after combat troops are out, the officials said.
All U.S. troops have to be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011, under an agreement the Bush administration signed with the Iraqi government last year.
Reality on the Ground
Despite Obama's announcement of a plan to withdraw U.S. soldiers from Iraq, troops are likely to remain in the country for years.
John Barry
Newsweek Web Exclusive
"We campaign in poetry, but we govern in prose," Mario Cuomo once said. The governor of New York for a decade and, in his day, a possible contender for the presidency elegantly captured the rueful task of all legislators, a task that is now facing President Barack Obama.
Obama's decision, to be announced Friday, to withdraw 90,000 of the 142,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by August 2010, is a classic example of the gulf between campaigning and governing.
Obama campaigned on the notion that Iraq was the bad war, and Afghanistan the good war. His opposition to the Iraq war, and his pledge to withdraw U.S. troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his election gave him a critical edge among the Democratic faithful over Hillary Clinton.
But now the occupation of Iraq, however bungled, gives promise of success. The country is a tumultuous democracy, one still threatened by internal conflicts, but by most accounts set on a political course that will make it unique in the Arab world. At the same time, Afghanistan looms as a sinkhole for American efforts, lacking the government, social structure, history or economy that it needs for a successful outcome, however many more troops Obama is persuaded to send beyond the extra 17,000 he has agreed to.
So Obama's decision to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by next year reflects another truth of American governance: midterm elections matter. If, by November 2010, Obama can say that all American combat brigades are out of Iraq, he can claim a pledge fulfilled. It would have taken 19 rather than 16 months, but it would be a political triumph nonetheless.
Except that it won't be entirely living up to the president's campaign promise. Combat brigades will be out of Iraq, but all U.S. troops are unlikely to be. In reality, what Obama has decided will largely replicate the plan B that his predecessor was offered in fall 2006. Plan A was what became known as "the surge": send in more troops, with the new mission of making space for Iraqi politicians to get their act together. Plan B was to pull out most U.S. forces but to keep a reserve in the country, at bases outside Iraq's cities, to intervene in emergencies, with others embedded as "advisers" in Iraqi units they were training (in reality, commanding in combat). Obama's Friday announcement is expected to indicate that a force of 35,000 to 50,000 forces will stay behind, probably at least until December 2011.
Bush, courageously, chose plan A. Like his father, who late in the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1991 doubled the number of troops he sent, W doubled his bet. It has worked well enough to give his successor the political luxury of opting now for something very closely resembling plan B.
Obama's "withdrawal" plan will leave perhaps 50,000 troops in Iraq. Some, now to be termed "advisory training brigades," will be embedded with Iraqi frontline units. Others, to be known as "advisory assistance brigades," will be hunkered out of sight in desert bases but ready to intervene in a crisis. And U.S. air power will still be in Iraq, poised to provide critical reconnaissance and on runway alert to give close air support to beleaguered Iraqi units.
This is an eminently sensible decision by the new president, as is his reported further agreement that withdrawals won't start in earnest until after the crucial Iraqi parliamentary elections this December, which will be a defining test of whether democracy has taken root in Iraq. The provincial elections last month succeeded beyond expectations, but highly charged issues face the infant state: Kurds versus Arabs in the cities of the north and the growing influence of Shia in the south, all while the precipitous collapse of oil prices deprives Baghdad of cash to rebuild the country.
The December elections aren't a sure thing, which is why the continuing presence of U.S. troops is essential. A U.S. military presence is, and will be for some years to come, the ultimate guarantor that the factions within this new state have to settle their political differences by argument and compromise rather than firepower. (Not to mention that they're Iraq's buttress against Iranian efforts to sway Iraqi politics through its support of militia forces.) The more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to date constitute an ultimate investment in the peaceful future of the place, after all.
Still, Obama's reported decision won't appease his fellow Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, majority leader in the House, is already condemning it. "I don't know what the justification is for 50,000 [troops]," she has said. "I would think a third of that, maybe 20,000; a little bit more than a third, 15,000 to 20,000." General Pelosi seeks to run Iraq from her tactical headquarters on Capitol Hill. President Obama, meanwhile, is making the transition from campaigning to governing.
As to the poll, it is an on line poll. It is a curiosity, nothing more. I wouldn't attach any significance to it.
What kind of polls do you like, ones where pollsters call individuals ask them the questions then manipulate the answers to what ever they want. The MSNBC poll at least shows us what those who online think. Average online Joe. That is pretty accurate.
In the past, you have inundated us with opinions based upon poll data that you collected and swore by. MSNBC if I am not mistaken was one of your sources.
EagleSmack, the kind of polls I trust are the ones carried out by independent, reputable polling organizations such as Gallop, where a random sample is selected in a scientific, statistical manner.
Such scientifically conducted polls represent an accurate snapshot in time. If Gallop poll shows me the same result as the online poll, I will believe it, in that it will be a snapshot in time of what people think about Obama.
But on line poll? Come on, it is a joke, a curiosity nothing more. It says that the bloggers who responded to MSNBC poll feel that way, nothing more (always assuming that there was no systematic spamming by a small group to skew the results). It tells us nothing about the sentiment of the country at the present time.