"Barack Obama defied conventional wisdom and opposed invading Iraq. He did so at a time when some told him that doing so would doom his political future. He took that risk"

Who exactly told him that?  His political future would have been doomed if he did NOT oppose the war.  He never would have won the Democratic primary for US Senator.  There was absolutley no political risk to him in opposing the war.  The only risk would have been in supporting it.

Claiming to be against the war when you are running for the U.S. Senate in one of the most Democratic states is hardly leadership; though, I applaud Obama for taking that position.

But the question is: When he came to the U.S. Senate, he WAS NOT an outspoken opponent of the war and did not do ANYTHING to force the U.S. Senate to take the measures it is doing today back in 2005-2006.

That is NOT leadership. Plain and Simple!

This was vividly illustrated by the sharpest exchange from last night's debate, where both Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd excoriated Obama for his comments on Pakistan, not on the ground that Obama's statements were wrong on the merits (i.e, not that we should avoid military action inside Pakistan under those circumstances), but instead on the ground that he committed the sin of actually discussing with the American people what our foreign policy would be.

leftblogs is that I am reassured about (almost) all our candidates. Greenwald is amazing; that he supports Obama (though I don't know if officially, he always has a good word for him) tells me that my concerns are probably overblow. And that Daou (and one or two of my favorite Kossacks) supports Clinton, likewise. They may not be my candidates, but intelligent, informed, committed progressives support them; they're not as bad as I fear.

Samantha Power's memo makes three points about conventional wisdom:

Diplomacy - America should talk with its adversaries, and should not punish nations by not talking.

Terrorist Sanctuaries - America should attack certain Al Qaeda targets regardless of International law.

Nuclear Attacks on Terrorist Targets - America should not use nuclear weapons to kill single individuals.

The first, diplomacy, is attacking the Bush position, every Democratic candidate agrees that we should have high level talks with our adversaries. The second, sanctuaries, uses rhetorical sleight of hand to erect a straw man. No American politician thinks we should not strike Bin Laden if we find him and the country he is in is protecting him. The problem is most people do not believe Pakistan is protecting Bin Laden, only Obama makes this claim. The third point, using nuclear weapons to target individuals in the middle of an innocent civilian population, is an absurd hypothetical that no presidential candidate should entertain.

None of her caricatures are Democratic positions, and most aren't even Republican positions, so they are no-ones conventional wisdom. This memo is terribly dishonest, and it surprises me to see a usually smart commentator like Greenwald embrace it.

Josh Marshall has a post out also calling the controversy around Obama's comments contrived:

And the truth is that I think Obama's actual words are so clearly unobjectionable that this is all Kabuki theater of a particularly strained and disingenuous sort. All Obama said was that if we have actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan won't act, we will act.

Clearly, no Republican can quibble with this. They're on the record for invading countries because they might become dangers to us at some point in the future. They're hardly in a position to disagree with Obama if he says we'll hunt down people who committed mass casualty terror attacks within our borders. And I'm not sure Democrats are in much of a position to do so either.

The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy -- strike hard where they aren't and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.

The repugs at the recent debate said exactly the same things about him that Hillary Clinton said--they called him "naive."

It was very strange to hear them parroting Hillary Clinton, but I guess I shouldn't be thatsurprised.

Obama Speech is so right on and was gutsy to say it.

It is so filled with commonsense that I dont understand why the blogosphere dont praise it.

In 2005,  Rumsfeld stop the mission against an AlQueda leadership meeting in deference to Musharaff who had a truce w/ them.

Seriously why would you not want to  get rid  once and for all a terrorists group who still aims to kill you and wreak havoc whether Musharaff agrees or not.

Musharaff then can feign anger against US but at least the leadership is gone which means no more brains and funding for the foreign fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and will take time for them to regroup.