The End of Iraq (Cont'd)

Townhall.com ^ | august 16, 2014 | Paul Greenberg

[Kozak]

Thanks to the incompetence of Dear Leader, Joe Biden is now a Prophet.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Yes as much as it pains me to say it and my Mom said it yesterday we probably would have been better off if we had followed Joe’s idea of a loose coalition of 3 states.

To be fair to Barack Obama which also pains me no end Malaki kicked us out so he and his Iranian buddies could start dismantling the Consensus govt. Not that Barry complained about it or anything.

[hosepipe]

Obama is just punishment for electing him TWICE...

[Kozak]

We could have twisted Malikis arm when we had leverage there.
But Dear Leader was eager to bug out and take a victory lap.
So he destroyed years of Blood, Sweat, Tears and Treasure.

[Alberta's Child]

I stand with George W. Bush on this one.

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building." -- George W. Bush, Republican Party candidate for President of the United States (10/11/2000)

Much as I hate to defend Barack Obama, the responsibility for this debacle in Iraq should be placed right where it belongs: with the delusional hacks from the prior administration who actually thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq in the first place.

[Kaslin]

You said it. His ‘You can not learn the presidency’ comes to mind

[PGalt]

blood and treasure

blood of America's finest defenders (R.I.P.) and treasure of America's finest workers (R.I.P.)

Death & plunder…it's what totalitarians do. Witness current events, foreign and domestic.

[Kaslin]

I am not sure if I understand you.

First you write:

I stand with George W. Bush on this one.

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building." -- George W. Bush, Republican Party candidate for President of the United States (10/11/2000)

Than you continue with:

Much as I hate to defend Barack Obama, the responsibility for this debacle in Iraq should be placed right where it belongs: with the delusional hacks from the prior administration who actually thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq in the first place.

---

Did you forget that the Iraq war was the continuance of Desert Storm, and that the "invasion" as you call it was approved by most of the rats, including Hillary Clinton?

[Yardstick]

*bump*

[Georgia Girl 2]

Sure could have but Barry saw an easy out and ran for the exits. Now its an out of control mess.

[Chgogal]

How bad was Iraq when Bush left? Should the US withdraw from Korea where we are technically still at war? How much treasure and blood was wasted there? What side of the DMZ would Albert's Child choose to live had he been Korean? We did a good job in Iraq and Obamam effect it up. PERIOD!

[Alberta's Child]

I was being facetious.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not a continuation of Desert Storm. In fact, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney explicitly said in 1994 -- in an interview in which he was asked why the U.S. didn't "finish the job" in Desert Storm -- that invading and occupying Iraq would be a bad idea. It's too bad Vice President Dick Cheney didn't heed his own advice nearly a decade later.

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey." -- Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney (4/15/94)

Why would you blame the Obama administration for the disaster in Iraq in 2014 when the situation was set in motion by his predecessor in 2003 and is following the exact script Dick Cheney described in 1994?

[Chgogal]

effect=effed

[M Kehoe]

Imho, drawing arbitrary lines to delineate countries without discussing those boundaries with the indigenous population is a recipe for disaster [Balfour agreement].

5.56mm

[Alberta's Child]

I'm not sure why people insist on comparing Iraq to Korea. Korea is a homogenized country filled with people who are among the most civilized in the world. Even at that, the U.S. insists on a multi-decade military occupation to "protect" them from North Korea when the South Koreans are perfectly capable of protecting themselves if they wanted to.

Iraq was cobbled together out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and is nothing more that a fictional "country" defined by lines on a map crossing ethnic and tribal boundaries. You find the same story in Third World toilets all over the world.

Iraq is turning into what it was always destined to be. The U.S. didn't need to piss away thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to make it happen.

[originalbuckeye]

Going into Iraq was the right thing to do. We saw evidence that Al Qaeda had training camps there; we knew Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant (think Kurd Genocide) and the Iraqi Government had tried to put in motion plans to assassinate GHWBush. Oh, and the weapons of mass destruction......didn’t they surface in Syria when the ‘red line’ was crossed? Under GWB, we had WON that war and were successfully stabilizing that country. Obama wanted ALL troops out so he could have his ‘talking point’ running up to the 2012 election. He had promised ALL troops out of Iraq....and he did it. He didn’t want any status of forces agreement. I am in shock that he now says he is surprised that people think he made the decision to pull ALL troops out. The more he talks, the more even his own people must realize he is a pathological liar. We WON the war, Obama THREW AWAY the peace.

[Alberta's Child]

U.S. military personnel left Iraq under the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement signed by George W. Bush in 2008, which required the U.S. to remove all of its forces by December 31, 2011.

If Obama removed those troops in 2011 to give himself a "talking point" for his 2012 campaign, then wouldn't you have to acknowledge that George W. Bush was a complicit player (four years before the fact) in Obama's 2012 re-election campaign?

[SoCal Pubbie]

“Why would you blame the Obama administration for the disaster in Iraq in 2014...”

Because the Big O is the President and it’s his responsibility, that’s why. Never before has a sitting President of the United States blamed his predecessor for his own failings. Anyone on this forum who goes along with this kind of excuse making should be ashamed.

[originalbuckeye]

Obama SAYS he was trying to renegotiate the agreement but the Iraqis wanted us out. Do you believe him? Do you think that 2011 was enough time? Do you think, if we had had a responsible President, that agreement wouldn't have been renegotiated to continue the progress being made in Iraq? I suspect Obama didn't do squat and knew he could blame GWB for whatever happened. And that is exactly what is happening. I suspect that GWB made that agreement in the faith that the time allotted would be enough. Obviously, it wasn't.