{"id":2169,"date":"2009-12-05T10:15:08","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T15:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningseditionists.com\/msblog\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2009-12-05T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2009-12-05T15:15:08","slug":"ok-maybe-it-is-an-escalation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2009\/12\/05\/ok-maybe-it-is-an-escalation\/","title":{"rendered":"OK, Maybe It <em>Is<\/em> an Escalation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it didn&#8217;t take long for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/12\/03\/afghanistan-withdrawal-da_n_379502.html\">officials in the Obama administration<\/a> to &#8220;clarify&#8221; that whole &#8220;withdrawal&#8221; thing.  SecDef Bob Gates says &#8220;&#8230;plans to begin withdrawing American troops in July 2011 are definite, yet flexible&#8230;.&#8221;  Ah, definite yet flexible.  I like that.  My pillow is firm, yet soft.  My sponge is damp, yet dry.   Not quite Rumsfeldian, but close.  SecState Hillary Clinton calls it a a &#8220;real target for us to aim at.&#8221;  Well, glad to hear we have a real target to aim at.  National Security Adviser Jim Jones (there&#8217;s a name that inspires confidence, eh?) is a bit more clear: &#8220;&#8230;this is not a withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in 2011&#8230;.  [I]n no manner, shape or form is the United States leaving Afghanistan in 2011.&#8221;  Well, alrightly then.  Sounds like &#8220;withdrawing from Afghanistan&#8221; is the equivalent of &#8220;health care reform.&#8221;  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it didn&#8217;t take long for officials in the Obama administration to &#8220;clarify&#8221; that whole &#8220;withdrawal&#8221; thing. SecDef Bob Gates says &#8220;&#8230;plans to begin withdrawing American troops in July 2011 are definite, yet flexible&#8230;.&#8221; Ah, definite yet flexible. I like that. My pillow is firm, yet soft. My sponge is damp, yet dry. Not quite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}