Op-Ed: The John McCain Campaign Releases New Video- The Obama Iraq Documentary

Using sound bites from multiple Barack Obama speeches, interviews and statements, the John McCain campaign releases a video called, "The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand," which shows contradicting statements made regarding Iraq.

It is a hard hitting video, longer than the 30 second or 1 minute videos that the McCain campaign usually releases. It is 7 minutes and 49 seconds long and just one example from the beginning of the video shows Barack Obama stating on On 1/10/07, "I am not persuaded that 20,000 addition troops in Iraq is gonna solve the sectarian violence there, in fact, I believe it it'll do the reverse". The video jumps forward to 1/5/08, where he says, "And I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops there then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence." Compare the two statements... After those first statements, on the screen the video shows this caption- "TRANSLATION: You're never Wrong If You Pretend You Gave The Right Answer All Along." Throughout the mini documentary that same theme is replayed using different sound bites from speeches, statements and interviews over the years and then comparing Obama's words to those stated at a different time, usually a different year and then a video caption headed by the word "Translation". This video is being released as Barack Obama is preparing for his first trip to Afghanistan and a trip to Iraq which he hasn't visited in 922 days on a fact finding mission. Obama's trip will be a five-country European and Middle East tour accompanied by a campaign plane of reporters and trailed by three network broadcast anchors. Expect to see sound bites from that trip as well as any statements that Obama makes after his visit to Iraq to be used in a future documentary if anything he says upon his return contradicts his previous statements. In my opinion, this latest release, although longer than earlier releases, is one of the hardest hitting campaign videos, from the McCain campaign, released to date. Since this video has been released yesterday morning it has already been mentioned in USA Today and shown by a Miami Herald Blog called Naked Politics. (Correction made on date of release)