@BarackObama’s First Tweet Was Anti-War

On April 29 2007 @BarackObama, which is
currently run by Organizing for Action, tweeted its
first tweet:

@BarackObama is one of the most followed accounts on
Twitter, with 42.1 million followers at the time of writing.

The tweet came a few days after the Senate passed a funding bill
that would have set a date for American combat troop withdrawal
from Iraq. From a press
release about the bill from then-Sen. Obama:

I believe that my plan for a phased withdrawal with the goal of
removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31st, 2008 is still
the best way to pressure the warring factions to reach a political
settlement necessary to end this war. This similar plan responsibly
redeploys our troops from Iraq while protecting our interests in
the wider Middle East. It ensures that we are as careful getting
out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama made sure to
highlight the fact that—unlike another Democrat seeking the
presidency, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—he was an early opponent of
the war in Iraq.

As Reason’s Ed Krayewski pointed out in September 2012,
President Obama
did not end the war. The agreement to withdraw American troops
from Iraq in December 2011 was negotiated between American and
Iraqi officials in 2008. In fact, Obama wanted American troops to
stay in Iraq after 2011. The troops left then anyway
because of that agreement signed by his predecessor—and so, as
The Huffington Post
explained, “the president ultimately had no choice but to stick
to candidate Obama’s plan.”

More from Reason on Iraq here.