Obama swaps Iraq and Afghanistan

President Obama mixed up the two countries while answering a question online Thursday. AP Photo Close

Hit with a tough question about his administration’s policy in Afghanistan and Iraq on Thursday, President Obama made a muddled mess out of his plans for withdrawing troops from the region.

Obama swapped “Iraq” for “Afghanistan” when he answered a question on YouTube about whether he still believes soldiers need to die in the wars there.

“As I said, we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year,” Obama said, a fairly significant misstatement of his administration’s Afghanistan policy, which doesn’t call for a troop withdrawal until 2014. The misstep was picked up by the Future of Capitalism blog.

“We’ll have a relationship with Iraq in the same way we have relationships with many countries around the world,” Obama continued, correcting himself.

The YouTube moderator interjected, in an effort to clarify Obama’s statement. “So out of Afghanistan, as in …”

But Obama continued his answer, finally getting his wars sorted out.

“Afghanistan is a tougher situation,” he finished. “We’re going to begin to phase down our troop levels, and we’ve agreed with our allies that by 2014, this will be an Afghan-led effort.”
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