I keep hearing (expecially over here in the UK) that the NYT is "a liberal rag in the tank for Obama", yet here they are not correcting an obvious falsehood from palin!!! 

in some ways they are liberal.  on the other hand, they were totally in the tank for bush and his claims of weapons of mass destruction in iraq.  they allowed judith miller to write story after story of unsubstantiated and often false tales of those weapons, and backed up by highly dubious sources with an ax to grind.  those times stories were reprinted all over the country, and used as backup by the right as proof of why we needed to invade.  it was, see even the liberal times says so...

as for palin and the mccain campaign, they are clearly trying to portray obama as saying that american troops in afghanistan are committing indiscriminate killings of civilians.  but when you have to chop a sentence in half, you are obviously not telling the truth.  obama has been saying consistently we need more troops in afghanistan, and that does not equate with casting them as uncaring about killing civilians.  obama has not done that, and it's just more of that slime trail that palin leaves behind everywhere she goes.   clearly. obama is saying troops on the ground mean less bombing and less accidental killings, because those accidental deaths serve to undermine our position.  it's a tactical move, and palin is lying about it. 

Of course they're a "liberal rag".  Just look at this excerpt from the article:

"...Ms. Palin said, as she was interrupted by a deep-throated chorus of boos."

"Deep-throated"?  "Chorus"?  "Booze"?  Surely you're not naive enough to interpret that as anything other than a sublime reference to a Choir concert after-party that allegedly Ms. Palin attended.  Only a liberal rag would attempt to smear her with an old high school story today.  Despicable.

She should sue.

What?  Obama is against U.S. troops!  He's a terrorist!  Hang him!

Palindrone Twit is nothing more than background noise now.... a bell rung by Karl Rove to make the Troglodytes drool on command.

I can't wait to see the Twit debating Newt Gingrich in 2012.

Does Governor Palin even know where Afghanistan is?

Sure she does.... she referred to it as a "neighboring country" just the other day.

BRILLIANT!

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/10/today_in_geography.php

Sure she does.  They're our neighbor!  She can almost see Hamid Karzai from her house in the morning when she wakes up.

They told her she was getting cable and she thought they said Kabul.

No she doesn't. She called it a neighboring country. I suppose she can see it from her home in Alaska.

"[w]e've got to get the job done there [in Afghanistan] and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there." --- Barack Obama

"In the most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States refused to prepare for ground operations, refused to have air power used effectively because he wanted them flying -- he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such -- in high altitude."  --- John McCain, Republican Debate, Feb 2000

U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan on Aug. 22 killed some 30 civilians, far more than the military has previously acknowledged, defense officials said Wednesday (10/8/08).

DOH!  I guess the Twit didn't see that story in all those papers she reads every day!

Pete-

U.S. troops don't kill civilians.  Why are you a liar?  Are you a terrorist, or secretly Muslim?

Obama and McCain both voted against funding the troops, but McCain did it out of love for the troops (he wants them to learn responsibility), and Obama did it because he hates America and wants to surrender to Saddam Hussein.

</snark>

Hell yeah!  Bombs don't kill people.... people kill people.... oh, wait....

The Pentagon today admitted to killing 30 civilians in the August 22 air strike. Why won't Republicans just own up to the fact that the US military is irresponsibly bombing in Afghanistan because they don't have the ground forces to engage in a manner that mitigates if not eliminates civilian casualties? Those forces are STUCK in Iraq fighting for the triumph of George Bush's legacy. 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, a recession, a depression. Some legacy.

Randy

The dirty little secret is that Iraq is an occupation, not a war.   There is no "victory" in an occupation.  Either you stay, or you leave.   "Victory in Iraq" is just another chicken-sh*t Right Wing talking point.  There will never be an iron-clad guarantee that the Iraqis will not resort to killing each other after we leave. We've just bought ourselves a very expensive colony.

Don't tell that to Bullwinkle. She thinks leaving Iraq is waving the white flag of surrender. So, um, who will we surrender to? Oh, I know. A SANE FOREIGN POLICY OF NON-INTERVENTION.

Randy

Randy and nerzog, you both make excellent points, but I respectfully submit that a slight qualification is called for. Part of the problem is the concept of "collateral damage", a dehumanizing metaphor for killing civilians.  The "shock and awe" mindset of the neo-con civilian leadership is partly to blame.  Sometimes "actionable intelligence" turns out to be nothing more that a rival warlord using our military to settle a grudge against innocent folks.  Sometimes, it's just too bad for them that they were riding in the same vehicle as a "high value target".  Sometimes, it's carelessness.  In WWII, we consciously and intentially killed civilians by the hundreds of thousands, but I don't think that's the case in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Iraq was always intended to be a virtual colony because of oil, and the intention has always been to stay forever.  Afghanistan is the truly hopeless quagmire, and walking away from it would be the smart thing to do.  Unfortunately, it borders on Iran, the next target for the neo-cons.

They had enough troops on the ground when they leveled fallugah

We've neverhad enough troops in Iraq, not since its inception. The idea was to go in half-a$$ed to manufacture an excuse to stay indefinitely. That was never the strategy in Afghanistan. Why? No Texas Tea.

We need to just bail on the region. It's nuts and we're nuts for policing Islamic infighting.

Randy

McCain's hero, Mr Reagan, did not believe in troops. he believed in bombing the sit out of the enemy with super dooper laser precision aimed missiles.

What about the ones he sent to Lebanon.  That did not turn out well.

"Treason!" one man in the crowd shouted angrily.

On a two-day, five-rally campaign swing through Florida, Ms. Palin was met by an enthusiastic response from audiences who devoured every word of her anti-Democratic pitch.

These people should be ashamed, calling the future President names and degrading him. Palin should be ashamed.

"Treason!" one man in the crowd shouted angrily.

...as he thrust his pitchfork in the air along with his fellow village idiots.

during the playback I heard audience members say things like " kill him " and "terrorrist ".

I wish someone had asked McCain about his new Afghanistan idea about using the same plan only different that we used in Iraq.

He was referring to the so called surge in which our troops would clear, then hold an area. McCain claims to know Afghanistan. Isn't the terrain so different from the terrain in iraq that clearing and holding positions wouldn't work. Don't the Taliban and AlQaeda hide in the mountains? 

I don't understand. And I doubt very much that McCain understands.

I also wished that Senator Obama had explained McCain's position on Social Security. Obama has suggested that he'd like to raise the cap for paying Social Security Taxes. Taxing the wealthy to keep the system solvent.

MCCain's plan is to cut benefits for everyone and to increase the retirement age for everyone. So those who don't make so much money will have their benefits reduced and be expected to work longer so that the wealthy won't have to pay more now.

Makes sense to me.

Good point.  I always thought that clearing and holding urban areas was different from clearing and holding mountainous terrain.  But I never was a POW, so I could be wrong.

Here's an excellent quote from a column by Will Bunch:

"The once noble idea that U.S. military actions that kill innocents as collateral damage are a thing to be minimized and ideally avoided altogether is now a wussy concept for those arugula-eating tire-inflating wimps, now that we're in the glorious new era of American "shock and awe."

The column is pretty good, along with an "elitist" quote from Saint Ronnie.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Sarah_Palin_and_a_reality-based_approach_to_killing_civilians.html

So let me get this straight.  McCain is okay with air raids in Afghanistan that kill civilians as collateral damage and at the same time is against air raids in Pakistan that target Osama bin Laden.  I think the psychological term for this is cognitive dissonance.

Let me restate the whole thing.  Obama is wrong to criticize bombing of civilians (because of a lack of resources) and is also wrong to bomb Osama bin Laden.

I still don't get it.