OBAMA OVERSEAS

July 21st, 2008, 5:49 am · 1 Comment · posted by Dan Lehr

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(above clip: near the end, Obama sinks a 3-pointer on the 1st try)

OK, a confession: I have been up all night producing the 2-hour Good Morning Chattanooga newscast, & thus am left a bit groggy today.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about Obama’s overseas trip that’s going on right now, even though I’m letting others do the heavy lifting.

Click here to read about his visit to Afghanistan.

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(above: Obama interviewed in Afghanistan)Click here to read the latest from Iraq, where Obama arrived early Monday.

Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki made news over the weekend by saying he is in favor of Obama’s plan to pull troops out in 16 months.

That dovetails into an issue I think is a fascinating one for this election: how closely are the soldiers following this presidential campaign?

ABC’s Martha Raddatz just got back from her 17th trip to Iraq, & two Fridays ago she had some interesting tidbits that help answer that question on PBS’s Washington Week in Review:

MS. IFILL: Can John McCain do - can Barack Obama or John McCain do what they’ve been promising, in Obama’s case in 16 months? Martha Raddatz is just back from another one of her periodic trips to Iraq and she has tonight’s reality check. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says there should be timetables for withdrawal, so does Obama. McCain says no. Who’s right?

MS. RADDATZ: (Laughs.) I don’t know who’s right, but I think Maliki saying he was timetables is a little ironic since the administration would never put any timetables on them. I think that story about Maliki was slightly overplayed this week. I think that’s all about domestic politics - that Maliki wants to sort of show he’s not being pushed around totally by the Americans. They had some successes in Basra and in Sadr City. And I think in the end what you’ll see, and you’ve already heard the language change a little bit - it’s no longer timetables. It’s time horizons. Doesn’t that sound -

MS. IFILL: Horizons?

MS. RADDATZ: - so soft. The national security adviser there backed off on that timetables just a little bit. Now, Barack Obama - I go to the website. I know he’s added nuance. I know there’s been a little nuance throughout the campaign, but they’re -

MS. MURRAY: He calls it refining -

MS. RADDATZ: - refining, but the core of his plan - and I’m sure it attracted a lot of Democratic voters - is, I will start drawing down immediately, and will withdraw up to two combat brigades a month. That’s a whole lot of combat brigades. It’s a whole lot of people. It’s a whole lot of equipment. And the people I talk to, including commanders, I ask them a couple of questions. They’re not going to talk about politics first of all. They’re not - I’m not going to say, what do you think of Barack Obama? What do you think of John McCain’s plan?

But when you say, if someone ordered you to draw down immediately and pull out two combat brigades a month, and one of the commanders over there who has Baghdad said, you cannot do it unless it’s conditions based, meaning you can’t make those decisions unless you know what’s happening on the ground, or they fail. They couldn’t be successful. He actually said he thought it was dangerous to withdraw on a timetable if it was not conditions based.

MR. GJELTEN: But is that - is it politically impossible or is it logistically impossible? What about - could they - even if you didn’t consider -

MS. RADDATZ: Physically pull out the equipment?

MR. GJELTEN: Could you do it logistically?

MS. RADDATZ: There’s a really interesting point about this. We redeploy troops all the time. We’ve got - we just ended the big troop surge and all of those came out, but what you usually happen is you have more going in. The soldiers and Marines leave, a lot of the equipment stays. And you’re talking about for two combat brigades 1,200 Humvees. So I also went to Kuwait and said, how do you get these out of here? You’ve got one little port in Kuwait, where everything would have to come out. Ninety percent of that equipment would have o come out through that port. They have to wash it all - I was standing in a howling dust storm and they’re trying to wash these Humvees and things like that. So you look at all the complications there. A couple of commanders said to me off camera, there is no way we could do that logistically.

MS. MURRAY: Do you get the sense - we expect Senator Obama to go to Iraq shortly - and do you expect them to confront this issue with him when he -

MS. RADDATZ: I think they will give their honest opinion. And if you look back what David Petraeus has said in the past, he talks about conditions based too. He talks about no timetable. I can’t imagine they’re going to suddenly change their tune because Senator Barack Obama’s there. I think he will get straightforward advice. They certainly know civilians control the policies and civilians control the military. And they do what they say and whoever gets elected, I’m sure they’ll follow orders. But I think he will probably get an ear full.

And the conditions really have improved. This was the first trip - and this was trip 17 - that I’ve been on, where I actually felt we were in an exit phase. It just felt different. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in a year. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in four years. It obviously depends on who the president is. And John McCain has said that he certainly wants to stay and see this through. But you felt like you weren’t just bogged down there, that you were in an exit phase.

MS. TUMULTY: And what is your sense of how closely the troops are following this election. Does it feel like completely divorced from the reality that they are dealing with every day, or does it feel like it matters to them?

MS. RADDATZ: It really matters to them and they’re under orders not to talk about particular candidates. But I asked one young sergeant - we’re walking around and I said, I’m going to ask you if you’re following the presidential race. And he said, yes, ma’am, I am. I’m undecided, but I have read John McCain’s book and I have read Barack Obama’s book. They knew so much about these candidates. It was really extraordinary. It really - and randomly chosen soldiers, Marines, you can ask questions about it, and they are really, really - there’s a lot at stake for them.

MS. IFILL: And they can give you an informed opinion about whether -

MS. RADDATZ: About the economy, about gas prices - it is not - that’s what’s most surprising. It’s not all about Iraq. That certainly matters to them, but it’s gas prices and my wife says this - so it’s a fascinating look at politics over there.

MS. IFILL: Well, thank you. Trip 17, huh? Well, welcome back again.

Know what I wish? I would love it if every eligible voter in America is following the presidential race as closely as Raddatz says the troops serving our country overseas are. Can we make that happen, people?

Back to Obama. John McCain released what you could call his first negative tv ad of the campaign on Friday. (he has had others, but they were web-only):

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RealClearPolitics is a good place to get links to differing views on the Obama trip; they don’t have their Monday pieces in yet at the time I’m writing this but they should by the time you’re reading this.

So what do you think about any of this? The floor is yours!