Why I'm Voting For Nader

Barack Obama said this in Fargo, ND.

"[W]hen I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies....”

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I’ve said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe,” he said. “I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable."

He added, “I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

Note all the conditional weasel words highlighted above. Obama's position is essentially indistinguishable from John McCain's.

On Thursday, September 27, 2007, I wrote about the Democratic debate where Clinton, Edwards and Obama refused to pledge that they would have withdrawn US troops from Iraq by 2013. I quoted Jeffrey Feldman at the Huffington Post:

Rather than having a Presidential election between a problem solving Democrat and a militaristic Republican, the Democratic Party appears to believe that the race will be between an enlightened militaristic Democrat and an authoritarian militaristic Republican.