Since the Iraq surge’s inception in Jan 2007, Obama has declared, “The surge is not working.” Now in July 2008 when Obama recognized he was mistaken. Obama replaces his error in analysis with praise for the surge on his web sigte. While Obama has come to recognize the surge success. He quickly stated in the New York Times:
“The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.”
Obama now wants us to ignore his record on the pivotal point of the Iraq War but instead judge him on one of his many speeches on Iraq. From FISA to Public Campaign Financing, Obama has demostrated that his speeches don’t really reflect what his actual policy will be on a subject.

Accepting Obama's hypothetical that his 2002 speech would have been his actual policy in the Mid East, the hundred year war question now becomes Obama's instead of John McCain. Obama advocates containing Saddam Hussein--perhaps for a 100 years. Obama would have sent in more troops into Afghanistan and chased Bin Laden into Pakistan--rather Pakistan liked it or not. As we forget Obama's actual misjudgement on the Middle East policy, we must remember the middle east of 2002 so we can play out his imagniary success.

Since Pakistan had developed its nuclear weapon in the 1990′s, the US had implemented ecnomic sanctions against Pakistan. Pakistan support for the Taliban and rise in anti-American forces political parties was straining our alliance. Pakistan was an extensive illicit nuclear supplier. The network established in the 1990s by the self designated ?father? of Pakistan?s nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadir Khan, which provided nuclear enrichment technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea

Iraq was under control of Saddam. Saddam had now successfully learned to skim the profits from the Oil for Food Program. These profits were being used to buy influence at the UN and with Kofi Annan himself. Saddam was also deliberately dividing the Security Council by awarding contracts to France, Russia, and China.

Iran was funding terrorism through out the middle east and developing its nuclear weapon program with the help of Russia and Pakistan.

Future Obama speeches can tell us how Obama would have brought peace to the 2002 middle east. While Obama will ignore that the war in Iraq caused Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program and Libya to end its nuclear weapons program. The Iraq war allowed the United States to remove troops used to contain Saddam from Saudia Arabia--a recruiting tool for Jihadist. His future speeches will tell how he navigated the situation with face to face meetings with Iran and other tales of success. All we do know from Obama's voting record as state senator is when things require leadership he's present and from his time in the Senate, that he doesn't know how to prosecute a war.