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It’s Obama who lost Iraq: To ask the right hypothetical questions, it's imperative <tr>
nydailynews.com ^ | Krauthammer

Posted on 05/22/2015 8:21:45 AM PDT by RoosterRedux

Ramadi falls. The Iraqi army flees. The great 60-nation anti-Islamic State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall.

It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief.

Note: “were,” not “are.”

We are scraping bottom. Following six years of Obama’s steady and determined withdrawal from the Middle East, America’s standing in the region has collapsed. And yet the question incessantly asked of the various presidential candidates is not about that.

It’s a retrospective hypothetical: Would you have invaded Iraq in 2003 if you had known then what we know now?

First, the question is not just a hypothetical, but an inherently impossible hypothetical. It contradicts itself. Had we known there were no weapons of mass destruction, the very question would not have arisen. The premise of the war — the basis for going to the UN, to the Congress and, indeed, to the nation — was Iraq’s possession of WMD in violation of the central condition for the ceasefire that ended the first Gulf War. No WMD, no hypothetical to answer in the first place.

(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: krauthammer; obamairaq; obamalostiraq

1 posted on 05/22/2015 8:21:45 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

Full title: “It’s Obama who lost Iraq: To ask the right hypothetical questions, it’s imperative to understand that fact”


2 posted on 05/22/2015 8:26:59 AM PDT by alancarp
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To: RoosterRedux

3 posted on 05/22/2015 8:27:01 AM PDT by RightGeek (FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)
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To: RoosterRedux

The Wikipedia article on Mosul doesn’t even mention Obama, and makes it almost sound like ISIL liberated the city from the horrible mess created by Bush.


4 posted on 05/22/2015 8:27:26 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: RoosterRedux

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!


5 posted on 05/22/2015 8:28:25 AM PDT by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
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To: RoosterRedux

Iraq was lost when we didn’t clamp down on Sharia law.


6 posted on 05/22/2015 8:29:21 AM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: RoosterRedux

There were WMDs, Krauty


7 posted on 05/22/2015 8:30:49 AM PDT by subterfuge (Minneseeota: the laughingstock of the nation - for lots of reasons!)
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To: RoosterRedux
Krauthammer mentions one thing that the media have completely ignored: Obama and Biden THEMSELVES claimed Iraq was a success in 2010-2011, and - nauseatingly - they claimed credit for it as one of THEIR accomplishments, totally ignoring Bush's role.

So if Iraq was a success in 2011, and if it had a stable government THEN, it is THEIR failure if it is not stable NOW.
8 posted on 05/22/2015 8:32:42 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: RoosterRedux

“We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief.


In some ways, but the problem with Saudi Arabia is always that it had a split personality and a hidden agenda.


9 posted on 05/22/2015 8:42:49 AM PDT by rbg81
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To: alancarp

Thx for that. My internet service cut out before I could post the full title.


10 posted on 05/22/2015 9:06:32 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (WSC: The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end...)
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To: Steve_Seattle

Krauthammer mentions one thing that the media have completely ignored....


Let’s face it: when it comes to Obama, what hasn’t the Media ignored?


11 posted on 05/22/2015 9:15:04 AM PDT by rbg81
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To: rbg81
Let’s face it: when it comes to Obama, what hasn’t the Media ignored?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, they have written ad nausium about Lord Obama personally parachuting into Pookistan and killing Bin Ladin.

12 posted on 05/22/2015 10:16:33 AM PDT by Tupelo (I fell more like Phillip Nolan every day.)
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