Refine v. Revise

Barack Obama had two press conferences last week to clarify his stance on Iraq after he said the inflammatory statement that he could "refine" his policy after assessing the situation there.

From Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary: refine - To reduce to a pure state. To free from impurities; to purify. To become pure or purer; to affect nicety or subtlety in thought or language.

But what's in the English language after all...

The McCain camp quickly condemned his competitor for changing his earlier stance.

"There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience," stated spokesman Alex Conant of the Republican National Committee. "Obama's Iraq problem undermines the central premise of his candidacy and shows him to be a typical politician."

McCain supported the ban on Coastal Oil Drilling in 2000 in the Primaries now he comes out for it - this is what I consider a flip-flop. There is no question in my mind that Barack Obama is against the war and always has been.

Is becoming more educated on subjects and adjusting your perspective really a liability for any campaign or is the McCain camp just trying to pin the flip-flop tag on Barack Obama from the playbook of Bush v. Kerry? The pot calling the kettle black I should think.

For clarification, here is what Barack Obama said in September of 2007 during a Democratic debate:

"I think it's hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible," Obama said. "We don't know what contingency will be out there. What I can promise is that if there are still troops in Iraq when I take office, which it appears there may be unless we can get some of our Republican colleagues to change their mind and cut off funding without a timetable, if there's no timetable, then I will drastically reduce our presence there to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians and making sure that we're carrying out counterterrorism activities there.

'I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out."

Sounds the same...doesn't it? When someone finds out what all the fuss is maybe they could let me know.