AP Photo

I know all the candidates said it, but I’m particularly interested in Edwards saying it for a specific reason…

The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.

“I think it’s hard to project four years from now,” said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation’s first primary state.

“It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“I cannot make that commitment,” said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Wait, what? You can’t make that commitment? You’ve been making that promise in every campaign e-mail you send out (well every campaign e-mail except for the ones where he’s exploiting his wife’s cancer, anyway) and now you can’t make that commitment? Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not running on a platform of ending the war in Iraq, Senator, you are.

Here’s the wording he used in a more recent e-mail:

This election is critical to America’s future. We need to elect a president with the vision and courage to end the war in Iraq, stop global warming, provide universal health care for every American, and undo the damage that the Bush administration has done at home and abroad.

And here it is in one prior, released on 9/14:

Two powerful minutes—that’s what we saw last night. After President Bush made yet another argument for continuing the war, JohnEdwards spoke directly to the American people and told us, clearly and simply, why we need to end the war in Iraq now.

JohnEdwards is right—our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home. JohnEdwards’ message is unambiguous. No timeline, no funding. No excuses.

No timeline, no funding, no excuses, and no commitment to actually back any of that up. Way to weasel out, Senator.

Now before you go jumping down my throat, you need to hear me out here. I wouldn’t expect any candidate with a brain to predict that they would be able to full withdraw troops by 2013. That’s just asking for trouble and setting a goal that will be the “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge of the modern era. But, with that being said, isn’t it odd that someone like Edwards who’s obsessed with proving how he’s going to end the war when pressed on actually doing it backs down?

If you don’t want to make that commitment in a debate, Senator, stop making it in your campaign e-mails. He can’t have it both ways. Either he believes his e-mails or he believes his debate posturing, but something tells me that answer at the debate was more to keep his opponents from lighting him on fire and making him look incompetent than something he actually believes.

Source

Technorati Tags: john edwards, iraq, democratic debate