Barack Obama in Fargo, ND today:

"I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said. "And when 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."

Actually, what he's always said is this:

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

And that plan was made without consulting a single commander on the ground.

What we have here is the beginning of the "Iraq crawl".

That's where Obama denies having said what he has said and when confronted with his own words, such as those from his website, describes them as "inartful" and pretends they were just to put pressure on the Iraqi government (and they succeeded!).

Oh, and don't forget, this is on his website as of this very moment:

The Surge: The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.

Violence is down to 2004 levels or less, no one is talking about a "civil war" (except Obama), the Sunnis have rejoined the Iraqi government, 15 of 18 benchmarks are satisfactory and everyone but the lefty "defeatist" dead-enders have admitted the surge has worked.

Who is out of touch here?