Sen. Barack Obama who has been a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq has run into a bit of a problem when it comes to the success of the surge in that country.

From ABC News’ Jake Tapper.

Though a majority of the American people support ending the war in Iraq and think the invasion was a mistake, Republicans have tried to put Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, into a box as he prepares for his first trip to Iraq since securing his party’s presidential nomination.

Weeks ago, after Obama said he would be willing to listen to commanders in the ground to “refine” his policy, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Republicans said Obama was flip-flopping.

Then after Obama clarified that he is sticking by his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months, McCain and Republicans painted him as an intransigent partisan whose pending trip to Iraq is nothing more than a photo op.

“Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan,” McCain said today at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, “And I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time. In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

Another conundrum for Obama: the surge of US troops in Iraq having created a safer and more secure Baghdad, McCain can now (perhaps for the first time) point to an aspect of the war where he is able to argue that his judgment was superior to Obama’s.

Obama seemed today a bit on the defensive on Iraq, as evidenced by edits Obama’s campaign staff made to language on his campaign website decrying the surge as a failure, as well as a speech Obama delivered today in which he explained why the surge’s success doesn’t change his view of needing to withdraw U.S. forces in that country.

“For weeks, now, Senator McCain has argued that the gains of the surge mean that I should change my commitment to end the war,” Obama said Tuesday morning in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, just blocks from the White House. “But this argument misconstrues what is necessary to succeed in Iraq, and stubbornly ignores the facts of the broader strategic picture that we face.” 

In the 18 months since the surge began, Obama argued, “the strain on our military has increased, our troops and their families have borne an enormous burden, and American taxpayers have spent another $200 billion in Iraq” and “the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated.” Moreover, Obama argued, “Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the purpose of the surge. They have not invested tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues to rebuild their country. They have not resolved their differences or shaped a new political compact.”

What Obama did not mention today was that the surge had succeeded in ways he did not think it would.

Another case of trying to obfuscate the facts and use flowery language to convince the voters that we are not succeeding in Iraq which is all too typical of liberal Democrats.

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