Obama On The Road-- Making Friends For America Again

Barack Obama with King Abdullah of Jordan

If Senator Obama's trip abroad is doing one thing, it is showing American voters back home how completely isolated and stuck in pre-9/11-- even Vietnam era-- thought McCain is. Today's NY Daily News reports another Obama political victory in Iraq. Despite massive pressure from the McBush Regime, the Iraqi leadership finally seems to have found something to unite around: Obama's plan to end the occupation of their country.

After meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, the Iraqis declared they like Obama's plan to pull U.S. forces from the country by 2010.

"We are hoping that in 2010 that combat troops will withdraw from Iraq," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters after the meeting in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The announcement, aligning Iraqi leaders with his 16-month withdrawal plan, is a political coup for Obama, who went overseas after being mocked relentlessly by the GOP for never visiting Afghanistan and last going to Iraq more than 900 days ago.

Obama acknowledged U.S. military leaders have "deep concerns" about a timetable that doesn't account for changing conditions. But he reserved some wiggle room for himself.

"I retain the flexibility of anyone who, in the job of commander in chief, is constantly reassessing facts, risks and so forth," Obama told ABC News.

President Bush shifted a bit toward Obama's position last week, embracing a "general time horizon" to pull out.

But Republican nominee John McCain has not moved that far.

Yes, and he is pretty much all alone... well, all alone with the crazed extremists, the lobbyists, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman (who reports today show is less popular among American Jews than... the same Barack Obama he has been traveling to Jewish communities around the country to slam and malign. As the confused and gaffe-prone McCain stumbles from one inconsistency after another and from one complete misstatement of reality after another, it is becoming clearer and clearer that virtually no one not on the Double Talk Express thinks McCain's Iraq strategy of escalation is the way to end the war. And it isn't just the vast majority of Europeans, Chris Matthews, the Iraqi leadership, American musicians, and American Jews who like Obama. State Department employees and military personnel mobbed him in Baghdad as though he were their savior. Watch the ABC-TV report on Obama at the American Embassy: