The Second End to Combat in Iraq Celebration Featuring VP Joe Biden

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As the carefully staged White House theatrical play of The End to Combat in Iraq continues it's road show this time the second team took center stage as Joe Biden filled in for the vacationing President Obama to declare, according to the Los Angeles Times Joe Biden update:

No 'Mission Accomplished' claim on Iraq, but no 'victory' either.
 

Andrew Malcolm went on to report:

Fortunately, Sen. Barack Obama was about as wrong as he could possibly be opposing President Bush's 2007 troop surge in this news video from the former state senator's favorite TV channel.

As one result, the vacationing president and, this week, the peripatetic vice president are busy celebrating the U.S. military's success in Iraq with the withdrawal this month of the last American combat brigade.

Of course, the Democrats are not dumb enough to repeat the notorious "Mission Accomplished" banner of the previous administration. Nor is the White House No. 2 going to repeat his notorious claim from a February "Larry King Live" show that Iraq represents one of Obama's "great achievements."

Today, in an Indianapolis speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Joe "Let's Divide Iraq Into Three Parts" Biden did not mention his opposition to the Bush troop surge either. But he was naturally effusive in his praise of American service personnel, present and past.

Two other things to note in this administration's public relations war wind-down:

A) The administration's third commander in Afghanistan in 19 months, Gen. David Petraeus, as JB so carefully put it today in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis, "now has all the resources that the strategy calls for." (Full text below.)

B) What's missing from Biden's remarks about all the sacrifices being made as it was missing from Obama's 4,582-word West Point speech announcing his second Afghan troop surge and outlining a strategy there (including a pre-announced withdrawal starting next July), is the key word: "Victory."

Additionally, 50,000 heavily-armed American troops still remain in Iraq for....

... not always courteous counter-insurgency operations in coming months. So, "non-combat troops in Iraq" all depends on what your definition of "combat" is.

But with homefront approval of the nation's wars waning and an angry, frustrated electorate scheduled to vote in a midterm looming for Democrats on Nov. 2, we will be hearing much more on this from Obama post-Martha's Vineyard.

Now some might think after the NBC End of Iraq Combat staging last week this might be the end of the Administration efforts to capitalize on the public relations surrounding this ongoing historic event which is scheduled to really be completed August 31 but the President has now scheduled a major address for August 31 about, what else, the end of combat in Iraq in case you missed the first two events proclaiming the end of combat.

Apparently the hoopala is designed to make us overlook the fact about 50,000 combat ready troops will remain in Iraq after we have finished combat, that thousands of private contactors will be hired to fight in Iraq and that no one thinks the remaining 50,000 troops will be withdrawn by the end of next year as also promised.

I find the Administration reference to private contractors not being a combat force rather odd as long ago governments and kings hired such private contractors to fight their wars only they called them paid mercenaries and they were the fighting force.

One final note as I mentioned in my last article is that the real last remaining combat brigade in Iraq is the Stryker 2-25 brigade as reported by a soldier still in Iraq fighting after the NBC end of combat show. Perhaps Obama will acknowledge this truth as the 2-25 is from his home state of Hawaii and would make for more great theater.

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