The speech lacked focus.  He did not deliver it with much conviction, kept contrasting what happened “in the past” and how those days are over.  His tone never wavered.  He didn’t pause for effect.  I don’t think he ever used the noun, “victory,” or any form of the verb, “to win.”

Don’t get me wrong, there were some good things it, especially the points he made about Pakistan, but it was as Charles Krauthammer put it, a “strange speech.”

UPDATE:  I’m pretty happy with the president’s plan, saved for his insistence on an “Exit Strategy.”  He just seemed too defensive and didn’t really make the case for this plan, doing more to respond to the naysayers, more like the way a blogger responds to a critical comment than to the way he writes a post.

UP-UPDATE:  Krauthammer pretty much summarized my thoughts.  Ok, right now, I really don’t watch to blog about this.  May watch the second part of a miniseries about a more determined leader.

I had started typing notes, but his first line caught my attention:  about bringing “this war to a successful conclusion.”

Will he ever say, “victory”?

Do appreciate that he said terrorists on 9/11 “murdered” Americans.  But, wait, did he call them terrorists?

Yup, using the expression “terrorist network.”  But, is at pains to talk about “international legitimacy.”

Also, he seems to be rushing this speech.

Why is he bringing it Iraq?  And the rifts it caused?  Bringing that war to a “responsible end.”  Hasn’t yet used the word, “victory” or any form of the verb “to win.”

Like the line about “hard-earned milestones” in Iraq.

Back to typing notes for a later post, but I’ll just say that I’m really not liking this speech, it seems to be more about his decision-making process than about the decision itself.  Has he yet said “defeat” Al Qaeda, focusing too much on turning over to Afghanis.  Shouldn’t we first defeat Taliban/Al Qaeda, then turn it over?  Did FDR turning over power to Germans before we had conquered the Nazis?

So, as I click on AOL to check my e-mail, I’m treatedd to yet another Palin-bashing headline in their “Top News” column.  Sarah Palin, we are told is flying into a “New Controversy With Her Book Tour“. The gist of the story: the former Alaska Governor sometimes uses a “Gulfstream II private jet, which rents for $4,000 an hour” to jet between stops as she traverses the country to sell her book.

Wonder if AOL ever had a headline in their top news favorable to this this accomplished and charismatic conservative woman.

In her pointless piece, Dana Chivvis repeats a lie repeatedly told by left-wing critics of the 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee:

Luxuries like the official jet that came with the position, which, as she declared in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, she had sold on eBay. (In reality, the plane was sold through an aircraft broker to a businessman, according to FactCheck.org.)

Sorry, Dana, in that speech, Palin never said she sold the plane on eBay. She said, “I put it on eBay.” If Miss Chivvis were interested in reporting honestly on this good woman, instead of looking for excuses to attack her, she might have checked the speech online to make sure she was quoting the Republican accurately.  (Or maybe she did and doesn’t understand the difference between putting something on ebay and selling it there.)

To confirm that this featured writer on AOL got her facts wrong, I did a simple google search, “sarah palin speech republican national convention” and, in under a minute, had accessed the speech and found the passage quoted in the previous paragraph.

And since Miss Chivvis is so concerned about Sarah Palin’s supposed hypocrisy for flying a private jet, I’m sure she’ll next be blogging on all those warning us to lower our carbon footprint as they jet around the world on their private planes.

While I have faulted the President in private conversations for his “dithering” on Afghanistan, I have barely touched on the subject on this blog.  It’s not that I don’t think the issue is important, it’s just that I think pundits and other bloggers have pretty much said all that needs to be said.

I am somewhat heartened to read that he has “issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan“.  While I was hoping he would send the full complement that General Stanley McChrystal had requested, this may well be enough to secure victory in that troubled land.  I will wait until after hearing (or reading, depending on my schedule) his speech at West Point this evening (and perhaps even later than that) before offering a more complete opinion on the matter.  But, for now, it seems to be a step in the right direction.

While Obama did dither, resembling the dissembling George McClellan more than the more straightforward Abraham Lincoln, in the end, he will be judged not by the time it took to make the decision, but by the decision itself.  Should we see the victories in Afghanistan similar to those which followed the “surge” in Iraq,  the dithering may soon be forgotten (or least downplayed), while the successes will make headlines.  Should our armed forces succeed in defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, then President Obama will have won a great victory for our nation, the Afghan people and the free world.

It is one achievement for which I am ever eager to praise this Democrat.  And hope that all Americans are prepared to offer him such accolades.  For he will achieve them not for himself alone, nor for his party, but for the country.  We wish him every success in this endeavor.

Google “Palin lie ‘bridge to nowhere’” and you get tens of thousands of hits, many to left-wing blogs (and even a few “news” articles) telling us that that good woman lied when she said “Thanks, but no thanks” to the “bridge to nowhere.”  You see, while campaigning for Governor of the Last Frontier n 2006, that Republican supported the bridge.  But, she, like many of us, from time to time, changed her mind.  And did so long before she spoke that line at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

Indeed, the Alaska Democratic Party credited that reformed-minded Republican for killing the bridge.

Now, if changing one’s mind amounts to a lie, well, then Barack Obama is the biggest liar of them all.

When each of his promises reaches its “expiration date,” well, then the Democrat tells another whopper.  He lied about using public funding for his campaign.  He lied about delivering a “net spending cut.”  He lied about going line by line through the federal budget and eliminating programs that don’t work.  And on and on it goes.

So eager are some to “get” Sarah Palin that they apply a standard to her which, if applied to any one of their political allies, would make them look far worse, far, far worse than than accomplished conservative.