Beating the Dead Horse Again

As perhaps I've mentioned before, Barack this week reneged on his primary campaign promise to withdraw our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months. For some reason, the media is refusing to notice. Here are just a couple of examples.

From Time Magazine:

Obama's liberal supporters, on the other hand, have been unsettled by his recent comments suggesting that, as President, he might "refine" his timetable for bringing American forces out of Iraq based on the recommendations he gets from American commanders.
It's already been as refined as white sugar.

The French news service AFP says in a story today:

In a major foreign policy address on Tuesday, Obama reiterated his promise to get most US combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months, and to focus on Al-Qaeda havens in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

No, he muddled the language on that commitment so that no one will ever be able to say he had such a commitment.

Just to recap, here is the position he erased from his website this week:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.

Now, his new position, as articulated in his speech Tuesday.

We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months... After this redeployment, we'll keep a residual force to perform specific missions in Iraq... We will make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy - that is what any responsible Commander-in-Chief must do.

Notice that he says "we can" withdraw in 16 months. This sentence doesn't even make clear that a 16 month withdrawal is part of Barack's plan - we have to infer this from the later statement, "After this redeployment." And, that redeployment is now contingent on tactical adjustments.