Torpedos Over Tripoli

I assume this "candidate Obama" thing is the latest hot item, as well. Sarah used it the other day in India; I'm sure it's making repeated appearances in the echo chamber.

 

A candidate looking for votes in Brazil wouldn't be running a very good campaign.

 

If you are keeping score at home -- the tomahawk missile count to date:

USA 163
UK 12
France 0

Figure each missile at $1.5 mil. for cool $243 mil. or $37,000 per citizen of Libya.

 

I do listen to some talk radio, but I don't get talking points emailed to me or visit any special websites.

As for the comments that candidate Obama made, I googled it shortly after the operation was launched.

Because he liked to criticize just about anything Bush did -- especially as it related to the war on terror -- I assumed he commented on this issue and he did. It's just one more instance of Obama embracing the actions of Bush that he once criticized.

I didn't refer to him as candidate Obama as a way of trying to diminish him. I just called him that as a way to distinguish from President Obama, who apparently has different opinions.

Unlike the lefties here who had numerous disparaging nicknames for our previous President, I don't believe I'v ever referred to him as anything other than Obama, Barack Obama, or President Obama.

If others are referring to candidate Obama regarding his previous quote, well all I can say is that I was first, but it's a pretty obvious way of drawing a distinction. I don't think they picked up on my posts here and I'm not following someone else's lead.

 

Just like when he was a candidate, they were calling him a "celebrity'.

He went to Germany, drew 200,000 people for a speech, and he's a "celebrity". He doesn't draw that, they would have been calling him a 'loser' for not being able to draw a big crowd. More hypocrisy.

 

Mika Brzezinski just about nearly broke down in tears -- I'm not joking -- trying to defend Obama's Spring fling. It must really be touching a nerve.

Bill Clinton came back from Martha's Vineyard to announce that he launched missiles on Sudan. This is the first instance I know of where a President decided to go on vacation to announce the start of a war.

Rachel Maddow showed clips of every President since (at least) Reagan making announcements of military action. Each of them did so in an Oval Office address from the White House. Every President. Every time.

Not Obama. No Oval Office clip. He announced it from Brazil as an add on to a press conference with the President of Brazil (who did not support the war).

Face it. He's on Spring Break. He is. Just like the trip to Indonesia was originally planned as a vacation around the kids' school schedule.

He should have cancelled the trip. It's an embarrassment. It looks bad. He's taking heat for it. And he's coming home early as a result, so I must not be wrong.

He should be here, making the case to the American public and defending the action. He's not. It's like he's embarrassed to use the American Military. In discussing it, I've never seen this tremendous speaker seem more hesitant. He paused. He stammered. And he kept trying to say how quick this will be and how we won't be in charge for long.

But, he never spelled out why it was important. Why are we involved? What's the mission? How will we define success or failure? What's the end game? What's the "exit policy"?

Do you really think he shouldn't answer these questions? In D.C. to the Washington press corp and the American public?

He was originally scheduled to take questions in Brazil. But then the press conference turned into a joint statement -- no questions.

Are you really defending this? As members of the press?

 

Oh, and does someone want to spell out how this trip is going to create jobs here?

I know a bunch of CEOs who donated to him tagged along, but what is the strategy? What is the goal? How will we judge the success or failure of this trip in terms of job building?

 

You know how they sign off very episode of Morning Joe with the "What did you learn today?" segment?

Well, this is what Pat Buchanan learned today:

"I learned our great ally, Great Britain, came to war with only 12 cruise missiles and the French haven't been seen since the kickoff."

 

Whoever came up with that stat sucked at math. There's 6.2 million people in Libya. That's $37 per person, not $37,000.

 

Britain only had 64 cruise missiles, so percentage wise, they used a lot:

It looks like they bought them in '04 and hadn't used any of them yet. And, at £1.09 million per missile, it looks like we made some good money on the deal. (I read that the cost is just $800,000 per missile.)

From 2004:

The thought of Britain trying to decide what mission is "cruise missile worthy" reminds me of poor Elaine Benes from Seinfeld trying to decide which guys were "sponge worthy" when she had a limited supply of sponges.

Do we think the U.S. & Britain had to negotiate how many missiles the British would fire? What was President Obama's minimum number of missiles that Britain had to fire to prove that this was not just a U.S. operation? I'm guessing the answer was 12.