Barack the "flip-flopper"???

"I am surprised at how ... the press ... I'm not trying to dump on you guys, but I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured...I wasn't saying anything that I hadn't said before. That I didn't say a year ago. Or when I was a U.S. senator. If you look at our position, it's been very consistent. The notion that we have to get out carefully has been a consistent position." -Barack Obama to press reporters

Obama is trying to be nice to the press. I won't be so nice. I first watched this non-story on one of the most incompetent news networks in recent times, CBS. On Thursday, they reported (atleast strongly implied) that Obama was switching his position on the Iraq war after his comments at an earlier press conference where he stated that he was willing to "continue to refine" his position regarding Iraq upon making a trip over there.

I watched the charlatans of this media network play video clip after video clip of Obama stating that he has been against the Iraq war from the start. Most of these were said when he was vying for the nomination against the corporate sell-out, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In grandiose journalistic style (or not), they then compared these clips to his comments about refining his position making a very strong inference that Obama was a flip flopper.

This is the most outrageous news story regarding a politician since that leftist manifesto of a newspaper (The New York Times) implied that John McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist. Of course, the times had a mountain of evidence to support this serious accusation which included two anonymous sources and NOTHING else (please feel my sarcastic wrath).

The media has long sold out the standard of pursuing the truth based on credible sources and reporting grounded in fact. Now, all the public gets from supposedly standard bearers in journalistic tradition, is inflated, yellow journalistic, trashy innuendo that must make the National Enquirer feel proud.

Take this Obama story: what kind of stupidity takes Obama's numerous comments against the Iraq war and then states that he is switching his position when he says he is "refining" his ideas about the conflict?

A definition of refine is as follows: "improve or perfect by pruning or polishing". This definition (Christians might be familiar with this in the popular worship song "Refiner's Fire") does NOT imply that a change of position is coming but the saying does lend credence to the fact that Obama is further defining a position he has held since the beginning of the war.

What person wants to remain stagnant in their views? Our views grow as they are challenged and as we experience first hand the outworking of those ideas (Obama going to Iraq and meeting with commanders/troops on the ground is a big step in this direction)

"One of the things I've always tried to do is learn from mistakes and get better, and I think we've run an awfully good campaign and I think if I hadn't been a pretty good candidate, I wouldn't be standing here. But that doesn't mean I can't get better, that my answers can't be crisper, that I can't be more precise." -Obama

In other words, he is still refining and good for him.