Iraq Homecoming

At Wednesday's White House presser (largely hogged by hurt MSM journalists demanding to know why Gibbs is running a scam by saying mean things about the "professional left") a few reporters managed to squeeze in some questions about Iraq:

Q On Iraq, is there anything that you all can envision, anything that came up in the meeting that could change that August 31st date for ending combat operations?

MR. GIBBS: No. And I would say that one of the things that General Odierno told the President and others in the meeting was that the level of violence observed over the past two weeks had been among the lowest in number of incidents that the coalition has seen since record-keeping on those incidences began....

...Q So there’s no turning back, no matter what?

MR. GIBBS: Nothing was brought up with the President that would necessitate us needing to turn back.

Success! Victory! This was after Gibbs bragged about Obama talking about the troop drawdown all during the 2007-08 election cycle, including an insinuation that the Iraqi government might have borrowed his plan to create the SOFA with Bush. Which naturally (and somewhat surprisingly) led to an obvious follow-up:

Q You just talked a minute ago about how the early part of the campaign was a lot about the war in Iraq, and the President was pretty critical of the surge. Does the President now think the surge worked and was a good idea?...

Q So was that improved security environment provided --

Q So I guess just bottom line, do you think he does think it worked in the sense that perhaps under his own tenure, because the security environment was improved, he was able to bring about these changes?....

Q It just seems like you guys are pointing to Iraq and this drawdown and this date as a success, and I wondered if you give any credit to former President Bush and the surge as contributing to what you guys regard as a success...

Gibbs' replies are not included, only the reporter's four questions. They are not needed--just look at the follow-ups and it's obvious he was spinning. Feel free to visit the site yourself and see if you can follow his pretzel logic, especially when asked whether we "won" or not (probably not gonna be a parade). Bottom line, this isn't about America for these folks, it's about politics. But why change now, Iraq has been about politics for most Democrats since the WMDs weren't found.

Meanwhile the picture above shows George and Laura greeting some Texas soldiers coming home to DFW airport this week. His book should be very interesting--that is, if he can be brutally honest.