Obama Backtracking On Iraq

Senator Obama’s statements on Iraq have become increasingly difficult to follow. ABC News tracks the latest controversy about whether or not Senator Obama said additional troops would help reduce violence during the debate on the surge in Iraq. At that time on Face the Nation he said that additional troops would not reduce violence, and on MSNBC he predicted the surge would fail. As ABC notes,

Asked about these predictions on Sunday's Meet the Press, Obama told NBC's Tom Brokaw that "I know that there's that little snippet that you ran," referring to the MSNBC clip, "but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops."

So according to Senator Obama he stated that more troops would help, and he stated more troops would not help. However, ABC has found that other than a reference to an immediate short-term reduction in violence in neighborhoods, Senator Obama did not make a statement about increased troop levels helping to reduce violence. As ABC notes, "It doesn't seem he made any comments along those lines until August 2007."

ABC Article From the Fact Check Desk: Did Obama Say During the Debate Over the Surge That "There's No Doubt that Additional U.S. Troops Could Temporarily Quell the Violence?"