Welcome to ‘Inside Baseball’ (or should I say ‘Inside the Boxing Ring’)

So now pointing out facts which dispel Mr. Dienhart’s lies are considered “personal attacks” and “diatribes” and “lies” in and of themselves…

No wonder Sen. Obama’s suggestion that we Americans ought to ignore these distractions and instead focus on actually solving the weighty matters before us has led him to a consistent and evermore substantial lead over Sen. McCain since the Democratic nomination process ended.

And little wonder too that Mr. Dienhart’s own updates and comments have devolved into the very things he and his supporters claim of my fact-based presentations: diatribes full of personal attacks on my integrity and lies about both what I’ve written and what Sen. Obama has said.

This entire debate centers on what Mr. Dienhart falsely claims are “flips” in Sen. Obama’s solutions for Iraq (as a sidenote, Mr. Dienhart is aided and abetted by a lazy press which is mistaking detailed plans as “flips” in their effort to create a news story where there is none as they hope to attract more ‘eyeballs’).

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, but Mr. Dienhart and his comrades stubbornly refuse to acknowledge, there have been no Obama flips on Iraq when one examines the facts that are readily available to everyone (including Mr. Dienhart).

Perhaps Mr. Dienhart’s exercise in futility is really just his attempt to ignore the fact that a majority of Americans believe we ought to take the training wheels off the Iraqis’ bicycle and let that nation stand on its own. Perhaps he’s trying to ignore the fact that even the Iraqi Prime Minister agrees with Sen. Obama in principle that there ought to be a timetable for strategic redeployment. Perhaps Mr. Dienhart is simply trying to promote Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid by trying anything and everything (literally) to tear down Sen. Barack Obama.

Perhaps all of the above.

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Fact 1

Mr. Dienhart began this week by claiming that Sen. Obama had flipped on his timing for pulling troops out of Iraq. His first post decried the fact that in January of 2008 (at a Democratic debate in Las Vegas) Sen. Obama said his plan for Iraq would bring troops home by 2009 from that point in time but that his recent op-ed column (which was presuming a January 2009 start date, ie, the presidential inauguration) would bring them home by 2010.

In response, I pointed out that Sen. Obama has been utterly and completely consistent about his 16 month Plan for Iraq. I wrote:

Obama’s Plan for Iraq is the same 16 month strategy he first proposed as binding legisl[a]tion in the Senate in January 2007.

• January 2007 (when it was first introduced) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment = March 2008
• January 2008 (when Obama again mentioned it in a Dem debate) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment = March 2009
• January 2009 (when the next president is sworn in) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment (should it be Obama who is elected) = March 2010

…In other words, the Obama Plan for Iraq is exactly the same. The only thing changing is the timing and the obstructionist Republicans — from the filibustering Senate GOP to the veto-ready Republican president — are the ones causing the delays in implementation.

I don’t know how to make it more clear for Mr. Dienhart and his comrades such that they’ll understand this. The Obama Plan for Iraq — bringing 1 to 2 combat brigades home each month — is, was and always has been a 16 month plan. I understand Mr. Dienhart may enjoy using fuzzy math, but really, 16 is 16.

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Fact 2

Despite the fact his first post, “Flip!“, centered around Mr. Dienhart’s contrived issue of 2009 versus 2010 Mr. Dienhart then posted a new, even more whiney post decrying the fact I pointed out Sen. Obama’s 16 month plan has been the same since he first introduced it in January 2007.

In that second post, Mr. Dienhart then claimed that what he clearly wrote as an afterthought (he even used the words, “Oh, and…” to discuss this point in his original essay) was instead the main point of his first essay, neverminding that the bulk of his first essay quoted and belabored Mr. Dienhart’s problems understanding 2009 vs 2010.

That afterthought dealt with Sen. Obama saying he would leave behind residual forces and this was somehow also a “Flip!” on Sen. Obama’s part.

I then pointed out that the Obama Plan for Iraq has been saying all along — since he first introduced the concept in January of 2007 — that he would leave training forces in Iraq to continue to train the Iraqis as they replace our redeployed combat brigades, among other, smaller numbers of GIs even after our combat troops had been either brought home or redeployed. (As another aside, even Sen. McCain now agrees with Sen. Obama that we ought to redeploy some of our stalwart guys and gals in uniform from Iraq to fight al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, a theater our current commander-in-chief has clearly ignored for too long. This, unfortunately for McCain supporters such as Mr. Dienhart, reflects an actual flip-flop for Sen. McCain who originally lambasted the notion of sending more troops into Afghanistan.

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Fact 3

And here’s where Mr. Dienhart starts getting truly bizarre. Despite my using facts (facts still are facts in this day and age, right?) to burst Mr. Dienhart’s balloons by illustrating how Sen. Obama’s Plan for Iraq has been utterly and completely consistent since first introduced in 2007, he continued to belabor his assertion that Sen. Obama has somehow flipped those consistent positions by updating his second essay. He threw in a few attacks on my integrity for no reason other than apparently the ol’ “good measure”.

In that update he quotes my clear and concise points about the 16 month plan being the same 16 month plan whether it begins in January 2007, January 2008 or January 2009 (see my own quoted bullet points above) and then compares that apple to his orange with a talking point directly from the Republican National Committee on Sen. Obama discussing troop withdrawals. To be clear, Mr. Dienhart quotes me discussing dates and then falsely claims I wasn’t discussing redeployment (when, in fact, I had also discussed strategic redeployment in that same post).

While it would be more logical on Mr. Dienhart’s part if he would stick to one issue (either his difficulty understanding calendars or his problem reading Obama’s solution for Iraq) when trying to make his hollow points, since both his points are equally invalid (as I’ve demonstrated ad inifinitum) it’s not difficult to debunk either one even if he hops around.

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In Conclusion

It seems Mr. Dienhart’s entire problem really boils down to Sen. Obama using shorter quotes during debates, speeches and interviews instead of reading off his entire Iraq War strategic redeployment solution every single time the point comes up.

As I noted in an earlier post, even if Sen. Obama really did bore everybody by reading every single line of every single policy proposal every single time such a discussion comes up just to placate the nattering nabobs like Mr. Dienhart partisans like Mr. Dienhart would then start to complain that he’s boring and over-analytical and pretentious and elitist and on and on.

This is the classic partisan Catch-22 gambit. In Mr. Dienhart’s eyes, and because of his clear dislike for Sen. Obama’s values and principles, there is nothing Sen. Obama can do on this front that would please him.

So be it.

It would be more honest of Mr. Dienhart if he got to the meat of the issue — Sen. McCain’s plan for Iraq versus Sen. Obama’s solution for the Iraq War

Now, Sen. McCain’s plan calls for an infinite, ill-defined deployment to continue to act as an Iraqi national police force based on numbers of US troops that simply don’t exist to be followed by permanent bases which would only serve to attract an unending supply of terrorists as we saw in Saudi Arabia when we did the same thing after the Gulf War.

That is a clear contrast to Sen. Obama’s solution for the Iraq War which includes strategic redeployment of combat troops in order to engage the Iraqis toward standing up on their own with a much smaller remaining, but not permanent, training force.

Instead, for some reason, he chooses to try floating lead balloons about 2009 versus 2010 and false claims that Sen. Obama is “flipping” about combat versus training regiments when in reality Sen. Obama has very clearly and very publicly been consistent since he first introduced his overall strategy in 2007.

If his problem is with Sen. Obama’s actual plan Mr. Dienhart should simply say so instead of making up things about non-existent “flips”…

Then we can talk about real issues instead of these needless distractions.

I have no doubt Mr. Dienhart is an honorable man. He served our nation faithfully and bravely as a Marin.

We may not agree on solutions to these very real issues, but at least he may come to realize our goals are the same even if our approaches differ: the security of our great nation; the safety of our amazing military men and women; training the Iraqi security forces so that bruised but bright nation can stand on its own; and destroying the real culprits behind 9/11 and our real enemies in the war against al Qaida and the Taliban 1400 miles away in Afghanistan.

Til then, at least he has admitted in the past his posts at Illinois Review are jokes…

Update: Mr. Dienhart issues a challenge to his fellow cons and readers “need to keep holding people like Rob Nesvacil accountable. Not just here at IR, but also at the polls.”

Likewise, friend, likewise. That’s the beauty of America — partisans such as Mr. Dienhart can take things out of context and ignore facts and folks such as myself can point it out.

And that is a pretty funny screen grab.

Update 2: Fellow Ill Review contributor Matt Gauntt chimes in on Mr. Dienhart’s challenge by quoting Buzz Lightyear to tell me “You are a strange, sad little man!”

Disney/Pixar fans will note that this quote is from a scene in Toy Story when Buzz is still wrapped up in his alternate reality thinking he’s real and not a toy…

Since this entire debate was initiated because Mr. Dienhart refuses to acknowledge the reality that Sen. Obama’s Iraq plan has been the same since January 2007 the quote is more appropriate than Mr. Gauntt may realize. Of course, unlike Woody, I haven’t called anyone a “loony” — though Gauntt’s and Dienhart’s fellow Ill Reviewers have thrown that epithet my way more than once. All in good fun, I’m sure.

Update 3: Minor point, and it could just be an Internet glitch, but it seems that the folks who claim to be open to debate have now taken to blocking even basic trackbacks to their posts. (Trackbacks are simple links between blogs. If they are blocked or deleted, readers at one blog won’t necessarily know another blog is discussing the post.)

Note to Mr. Dienhart: it seems you like to extrapolate simple observations into “complaints”. This is really just an observation and, as I said, a minor one at that since it could just be a snafu on Ill Review’s server.

Must just be a glitch in those Internet tubes… The trackback seems to be trickling in.