White House Disavows Obama’s Pledge for 2014 Afghan Withdrawal

Blasts Press for Reporting Public Comments

by Jason Ditz, September 03, 2012

After months of vague comments about 2014 being a transition date and the beginning of the end of the Afghan War, President Obama went majorly off-script in a campaign speech Sunday, vowing that he would have all troops out of Afghanistan by 2014.

While that may have been what they hoped voters would infer from past comments, it of course wasn’t true, and Obama himself should know that very well, since he was in Afghanistan earlier this year to sign the deal to keep US troops there through 2024.

Now they’re on damage control, with Press Secretary Jay Carney loudly disavowing the comments, insisting that Obama “never said” that, that he didn’t mean it, that everyone knows what the policy is, and finally that the press is trying to play a “game of gotcha” for even reporting on it.

Over the weekend President Obama repeatedly blasted Gov. Romney for not making his policy for “resolving” the Afghan conflict clear. While the Republican candidate is conspicuously silent on the matter, the Obama Administration’s policy isn’t necessarily any clearer, with the only thing we can apparently say for certain being that his policy isn’t what he told the crowd in Boulder, Colorado.

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