In defending his earlier opinion that the surge wouldn’t work, Obama decided to completely rewrite history. Instead of admitting that he had said the surge would make the situation worse and that he was wrong, Obama attempted to claim that he never doubted it would help the situation. ABC News’ Jake Tapper debunks his claim.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, on January 10 2007 predicted that the surge of troops in Iraq would fail. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he told MSNBC. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Four days later he told CBS’s Face the Nation that “we cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

Asked about these predictions on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Obama told NBC’s Tom Brokaw that “I know that there’s that little snippet that you ran,” referring to the MSNBC clip, “but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there’s no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops.”

Tapper can’t find any evidence of Obama saying there would be no doubt the surge would improve the situation on the ground. The most Obama’s own campaign could scrape together was a quote from March 2007, in which the Illinois senator said it may help in “certain neighborhoods” but wouldn’t help nationwide.

Instead of attempting to alter history, why doesn’t Obama simply admit he was wrong? Because it would undermine the very basis of his campaign — judgment. He has no experience to depend upon, so he has to claim superior judgment on the issues. Admitting that he was wrong on the surge would undermine that argument.