Am I missing something about Obama's gaffe? How is saying that the lives of American troops have been wasted in Iraq an insult to them? He never said it was their fault. If they had worked hard and heroically to build a house only to have the president and secretary of defense set fire to it, wouldn't we say that their work had been wasted?
This isn't even a Kinsley gaffe. If it were, Obama's apology would have involved retracting his statement. But he didn't -- he just reworded it. In what possible sense is there a difference between saying that the civilian leadership "has not honored" the troops because it "put them in a situation" in which they have died by the thousands and saying that the civilian leadership "wasted" their lives by putting them in the same situation? If you read the initial comment as an insult, don't you have to read the apology the same way? That is, the first comment says that the troops whole lives were a waste and the second says that the troops have no honor. Yikes!
Alternately, the second comment says that the president dishonored the troops and the first one says he wasted their lives. Neither one impugns the soldiers.
Please respond by pointing out the flaws in my logic or going into a tirade about how the right wing media is trying to bring down Obama.
