Cheney maintains that Obama deliberately promised too few troops in every offer, counter offer negotiation session so that Nouri Al-Maliki would have no practical option but to decline the American offer and so no status of force agreement would be signed...I, for one, find that train of reasoning rather dubious.
It hinges on a number of inferences that are FAR from self-evident.
Care to take a crack at it, or do you accept it uncritically (which I can't bring myself to believe given your analytical acumen.)
Hmmmm, alright tyger, I submit that the one who threw the mud on the wall is the one responsible to explain why he did it. Don’t just throw it up there and challenge everyone else as to why it is there.
In my subsequent post (#7) I quoted the transcript from Cheney's exchange on Fox with Kelly which corrects my somewhat faulty memory expressed in my original post (#6) to the effect that the step-down offers by Obama occurred with the Iraqis when in fact Cheney alleges that it occurred in negotiations with Obama's own Defense Department.
Nevertheless, Cheney's version is that Obama deliberately scuttled any hope of the status of forces agreement thereby making inevitable the scuttle of American forces from Iraq which, in turn, led to the current catastrophe and makes it Obama's responsibility.
My point about the article is that Pelley had no business pontificating as he did in the face of Cheney's assertions without at least dealing with them.
Whether as partygoer seems to imply, I have a responsibility for going deeper into the facts of the matter then I have outlined in my second post (#7), is an assertion I reject. One is entitled to at least open the subject with the assertions of a former vice president of the United States of America. If partygoer has facts to the contrary of Cheney's assertions, let him, as Mazda 77 suggests, offer them to us in rebuttal.
The above remark is not intended to be snarky but to frame the issues and in no way is intended to reflect on partygoer, the value of whose posts speak for themselves.
