Just compare the coverage of this to the McCain's Sunni/Shia terror funding "gaffe" of a couple months ago, which of course was actually not that much of a gaffe at all
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Obama posited -- incorrectly -- that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan -- forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don't speak Arabic.And, then again:
"We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan," Obama said.
The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.
Naturally they speak the local language. In Iraq, that's Arabic or Kurdish. In Afghanistan, it's any of a half dozen other languages -- including Pashtu, Dari, and Farsi.
"We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists," he said.
So far, so good.
"But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they're not in Afghanistan," Obama said.
Iraq has many problems, but encouraging farmers to grow food instead of opium poppies isn't one of them. In Iraq, oil fields not poppy fields are a major source of U.S. technical assistance.
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Now, with as much flack as the Left has given the Bush administration (sometimes rightly) for its incomplete understanding of the Middle East before moving into Iraq and the high premium they place on Obama's superior "judgment" on such matters, don't you think this comment from him will get a ton of coverage from Left blogs and Chris Matthews? Yep, I'm waiting.
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