goes to president obama, who was also named in 2008. joining me now, rick stangle. great to see you. this is the most fun, isn t it the most fun you have, the man of the year, person of the year, thing of the year, whatever. i think a couple years ago i was it, all of us, is that correct? all of us. user-generated content, which we all create back in 2006/2007. it s very exciting, the issue that gets the most attention out of all the issues we do. it s a great international and national parlor grame. why did the president deserve it the second time? i would say three reasons. first of all, he won an uphill battle for reelection, and he was the he s only the second democrat in american history to win a second term and get more than 50% of the vote. the last one was fdr. that s an amazing thing in an environment where we had
from the u.s. army s third quad run third armored cavalry division are on patrol in mosul, iraq. captain conrad brown is on command. mosul was mostly al qaeda insurgents that had been pushed out of the sunni triang until the presurge 2006/2007. they had taken root in mosul. it s the sixth straight day of around the clock operations. the men are exhausted. we d been up for about 36 hours at this point, and we re making our way back to our combat outpost. the battle worn neighborhood is known as an insurgent hot spot. the terrain favored the enemy immeasurably. the bombed out buildings were difficult to see from the windows. narrow alleys leading up to those roads and those intersections. but on this day the major supply route for both u.s. and iraqi forces looks clear and the squad run decides to take it.
also known as roadside bombs, ieds have claimed the lives of 65% of all u.s. casualties in both wars. the improvised bomb is the signature weapon of both the iraq and of the afghanistan war. it s the number one killer of soldiers. it s the number one weapon of insurgents. they re also as scary as hell. whoa! holy sometimes the difference between life and death is just seconds on a trigger. you just don t see it coming. you can have that gut feeling all day long but i don t know where it s coming from or who it s going to hit or who is going to push the button. january 11th, 2008, soldiers from the u.s. army s third quad run third armored cavalry division are on patrol in mosul, iraq. captain conrad brown is on command. mosul was mostly al qaeda insurgents that had been pushed out of the sunni triang until the presurge 2006/2007.
conservatism and in order to beat the president, no longer cover political story the entire primary season is the fact the president s approval numbers, not skyrocketing up are on a very clear ascent. he hovered around 40% approval from july to december. he is up in the high 40s. he is not somebody who is going to have a cake walk to re-election but he is clearly in the range where he is starting to look a lot more like where george w. bush was in 2004, you know, as opposed to, you know, as opposed to being, you know, where george w. bush was in 2006/2007. i think plenty of time to be positive later f i was romney, would concentrate on putting gingrich down. get the victory, you got the money, don t have to to talk about economic plans but it is hurting romney, hurting him with his high unfavorable number, continues to go up, not only with people across the country, but also with independent voters. now, that s something that he is going to be able to deal with later. he can always c
when i got there in 2007 through 2009, simply pulling the country back from the brink of civil war was considered victory. people get hung up on the troop surge and the number. a lot more was going into the surge in terms of the sunni awakening and in terms of the sawa. explain what those two things are. the sunni awakening happened in 2006/2007 in terms of getting some of the sunni sheikhs out in the province to realize we don t really like the americans here but they are better than al qaeda. and realize with large payments and putting them on the payroll. that s related to the sawa guards known as pretty much a paramilitary, many of whom were former insurgents hired to perform additional security. is it dirty? does it fit into the clean narrative we view the war, the good guys versus the nazis?