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Tuesday, January 20, 2009
(Video) Political Ad Watch: Iraq Veterans Against the War message to Obama
This ad from Iraq Veterans Against the War aired on NBC in the major-media markets of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Albuquerque, New York City, and Washington DC three minutes before Obama took the Inaugural Oath:
In his speech Obama echoed his election promises on Iraq and Afghanistan saying "we will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan."
Even with this strong rhetoric and repeated commitments to put an Iraq drawdown high on his priorities, it doesn't seem likely that US troops will be completely withdrawn from Iraq as the Iraq Veterans group would like. Though Obama may technically fulfill his promises, his plans seem to allow for tens of thousands of "non-combat troops" to remain in Iraq. Announcing his foreign policy team on December 4th Obama explained:
"I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary – likely to be necessary – to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq."
Obama's comments today seem to have had little effect on online predictions markets, below is a graph of the the contract price for the outcome “Number of US Troops in Iraq (given a Democratic president) as of June 2010” on Intrade.com, a popular website whose members bet real money to speculate on the outcomes of future events:
According to the contract rules, the current trading price price of 36.6 means the market expects 73,200 US troops to be remaining in Iraq in June 2010, approximately 60% down from present levels.
Posted by Kalim Kassam on January 20, 2009 in U.S. politics | Permalink
Comments
That's quite a message. I'd like to think it might have some effect, but its a truth no one wants to hear.
Posted by: jc | 2009-01-20 9:15:59 PM
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