Without his Teleprompter, BHO Ditches the WH Press Corps.

We're big fans of Barack Obama's Teleprompter.

In fact, were it not for TOTUS, the news coming out of of this White House might be viewed as mere propaganda if left only to people like Anita Dunn, Patrick Gaspard, or David Axelrod (et al.).

However, TOTUS brings so much balance and levity to the news coming from the White House that we just couldn't imagine life without it.

Well, apparently the President feels much the same as we do. He has a hard time working without TOTUS too. So much so, apparently, that BHO has been ditching the White House press corp of late.

It's been 19 weeks, according to the Washington Times, since BHO has had a press conference (you know, where POTUS-friendly reporters get to ask planted questions so POTUS can appear to be answering regally and...spontaneously--without TOTUS).

The president, whose job-approval ratings have been on a steady slide, hasn't held a formal news conference in 19 weeks, since July 22. That one ended badly, when Mr. Obama waded into a racial controversy by saying a white police officer "acted stupidly" when he arrested a black Harvard professor.

"It can't be a total coincidence that the last time he faced the press corps, we ended with beers in the Rose Garden with Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley, when the focus was supposed to be health care," said Julie Mason, a White House reporter for the Washington Examiner who also covered the Bush administration for the Houston Chronicle.

"It does seem like they are responding to the overexposure argument and trying to exert more control over his appearances," she said.

Veteran White House reporters have been grumbling about the lack of access to the president, who as a candidate vowed an unprecedented level of transparency. [Emphasis added.]

As the Ditherer-in-Chief preps for his big focus-group-tested speech on Afghanistan tonight, it appears the only thing transparent coming from this White House is Barack Obama's Teleprompter.

And, for its level of transparency, we are great admirers of TOTUS.

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Afghanistan: The Ditherer Cometh Hither as Congressional Morons Propose a War Tax...

The Ditherer-in-Chief will be addressing America next week (on prime time) to explain his better-late-than-never new Afghanistan policy.

President Obama is expected to announce his Afghanistan policy with an address to the nation next Tuesday, Dec. 1, likely in prime time, officials told POLITICO.

Obama held his ninth formal Afghanistan strategy session in the Situation Room on Monday night.

His ninth...?

And he still can't make up his mind while American troops are being killed?!?

Hmmm. Thoughtful or incompetent? Our guess is the latter.

Meanwhile, those morons in Congress are proposing a tax to fund the costs of the war...while they use tax dollars buy auto companies, banks, and abortions.

Pathetic!

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AMERICAN HEROES DESERVE MORE THAN DELAYED DELIBERATION

As the Obama Administration deliberates with the decision of whether to 'cut and run' or 'fight to win' in Afghanistan, ABC News has an inspiring story of the heroism and bravery of our American forces and the fight that took eight of their lives last weekend.

While the entire piece is absolutely worth reading and will capture your attention throughout, several passages stood out:

By the time Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ross Lewallen and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chad Bardwell arrived over the embattled outpost, dubbed Camp Keating, parts were in flames and dozens of insurgents could be seen on the camp's perimeter.

When the battle was over and the fire extinguished, many who survived had nothing left "except the clothes off their backs and the weapons in their hands," one soldier told ABC News.
....

Hunkered down inside the base's operations center were 1st Lt. Cason Shrode, 24, of Dallas, and Sgt. Jayson Souter, 22, of Tuscon, Ariz. The two men were working radios and directing traffic for the Apaches and attack jets that swarmed overhead.

But they knew the camp was ablaze and that insurgents had breached the camp's defenses and were inside the wire.

"It's definitely not a comfortable feeling to be at a place where you're most vulnerable, just not a comfortable feeling knowing these guys are right outside," Souter told ABC News.
....

The soldiers quickly realized the assault was much larger than any they had ever endured. The camp's generator was hit immediately, plunging the camp into pre-dawn darkness.

Soon the camp was on fire with strong winds fanning it along to additional buildings. Eventually, every building in the camp, except one, was burned.

"We were basically surrounded 360 degrees," Shrode said. "I think there were significant numbers [of enemy fighters] throughout the day."

He immediately called for air support.

"We had fixed wing [jets] 20 minutes after fight started," Shrode told ABC News. "We had helicopters 20 minutes later. ... We had so many different assets up in the air ... they were stacked on so many different levels."
....

ABC News had previously reported that when the Medevac flight arrived, some of the wounded refused a chance to leave Keating and kept on fighting. Soldiers also confirmed an earlier ABC News report that some troops gave blood during the fight to be transfused into wounded comrades.

When the attack was over, Souter and Shrode said the soldiers checked on each other and assessed the damage. The fire had destroyed much of the camp.

Lost in the blaze were "cameras, movies, stuff that helps you pass the time ... but there were guys who literally lost everything except the clothes off their backs and the weapons in their hands," Souter said. [Emphasis added.]

Read the entire piece here.

As the Commander-in-Chief deliberates, and deliberates some more, these brave and heroic soldiers cannot, must not, lose our nation's support.

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AFGHANISTAN IS NOT VIETNAM, AND COMPARING THE TWO IS FOOLISH

This morning, Drudge Report posted as its main header: 10 TROOPS KILLED IN DEADLIEST BATTLE OF YEAR. The story posted tells of 10 U.S. servicemen killed in two separate incidents:

Ten American troops were killed at the weekend in two surprise attacks that caused alarm in Nato’s US-led coalition.

In one, hundreds of insurgents attacked a pair of isolated outposts in eastern Afghanistan, killing eight US soldiers and several Afghan policemen in the deadliest battle in 15 months. Scores more Afghan policemen were reportedly captured by the Taleban.

In the other an Afghan policeman opened fire on the American soldiers with whom he was working in central Wardak province, killing two and injuring three.

It was unclear whether the policeman was working for the Taleban or simply ran amok but the attack fuelled the distrust that many Nato soldiers already feel for the Afghan security forces that they are supposed to be working with and training as part of the coalition’s eventual exit strategy.

In a separate, but equally significant story Drudge posted, as Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama is between a rock and a hard place about what to do in Afghanistan. His choices, it seems, can be broken down into two:

1. Declare defeat. Obama can bow to political pressure (mainly from the Left), ignore his commanders and declare defeat which would give America yet another black eye on the world stage further hastening the devolution of the Greatest Nation on Earth to that of a mediocre has been; or


2. Fight to Win. Obama can listen to his commanders on the ground in Afghanistan and finish the job started eight years ago.

To that end, military commanders are making their views known:

By openly declaring their views on the Afghan war, US military leaders have placed President Barack Obama in a bind as he faces a fraught decision over the troubled US-led mission.

Obama has refused to quickly approve a request from his commanders for a major troop build-up in Afghanistan, insisting first on a full vetting of the current strategy.

But while a war council takes place behind closed doors at the White House, top military officers have made no secret of their view that without a vast ground force, the Afghan mission could end in failure.

"They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong," Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense, told AFP.

As a result, if Obama chooses to change course in Afghanistan or decline a request for large numbers of troops, he will be rejecting the advice of the US military, raising the political stakes.

Commentators on the left say the military ought to keep its advice private without trying to influence public debate, with New York Times columnist Frank Rich accusing the generals of an attempt to "try to lock him (Obama) in" on Afghanistan.

....

The White House meanwhile acknowledged some members of Obama's team have been reading "Lessons in Disaster," a book about flawed decision-making in the
Vietnam war.

In the book, author Gordon Goldstein suggests the late president John F. Kennedy, if he had lived, would have rejected the military's demand for combat troops in Vietnam -- as he had lost faith in his generals' advice after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba.

"Perhaps this is Obama's JFK moment," George Packer of the New Yorker wrote
in his blog. "We?ll know in a few weeks."

The problem for the President and his allies on the Left is that Afghanistan is, as Obama himself has said, the "appropriate war" and, just as importantly, Afghanistan is NOT Vietnam.

Unlike Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda, Ho Chi Minh never had North Vietnamese live in 'sleeper-cell' clusters throughout the U.S., nor did Ho Chi Minh send covert operators to commit more than 3,000 mass murders on American soil.

Unlike Afghanistan, Vietnam was never used as a base from which to dispatch terrorists all over the world.

Unlike Al Quaeda and its Taliban abettors in Afghanistan, Vietnam was never really a direct threat to America and its citizens.

If the President chooses to ignore the threat of Afghanistan by ignoring the commanders on the ground, America and its allies will leave the entire world open to more terrorist attacks which could easily make 9/11 pale in comparison.

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