Posted on 09/11/2019 11:28:41 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
SNIP
He slammed a mistake Bolton made early in his tenure at the White House when he discussed a "Libyan model" in the context of North Korea — which that country took as a sign that its leadership could meet the fate of former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
SNIP
“So, John is somebody that I actually got along with very well. He made some very big mistakes,” Trump said a day after his abrupt ousting of Bolton.
He said the "Libyan model" remark had set back talks with North Korea and was “not a good statement to make.”
“And it set us back, and frankly he wanted to do things — not necessarily tougher than me — You know John’s known as a tough guy. He’s so tough he got us into Iraq … but he’s actually somebody I had a very good relationship with. But he wasn’t getting along with people in the administration that I consider very important.”
Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un no longer wanted to work with Bolton after the Libya remark.
“As soon as he mentioned that, the Libyan model, what a disaster. Take a look at what happened to Gadhafi," Trump said. “I don’t blame Kim Jong Un for what he said after that. And he wanted nothing to do with John Bolton. And that's not a question of being tough. That’s a question of being not smart to say something like that.”
Trump later belittled Bolton as "Mr. Tough Guy."
“John wasn’t in line with what we were doing and actually in some cases he thought it was too tough what we were doing," he said. "Mr. Tough Guy, you know, you had to go into Iraq. Going into Iraq was something he felt very strongly about.”
SNIP
The Iranians made a move on post Saddam Iraq long before the kenyan arrived on the scene. And for that you can thank Bush.
Most of the military and people who ran Iraq were Sunni and the countries population is majority Shia and aligned with Iran
The only thing keeping the Sunni military and managerial class safe from Shia led purges and worse was the United States military presence.
Once our military left the country, the Sunnis knew that the Iranian influenced Shia proxies would be at their throats
This led many Iraqi Sunni officers to conclude that bad as al Qaeda had been in Iraq, they were preferable to an Shia regime that was a puppet of Iran's mullahs
The Iraqi military leadership essentially handed Iraq and all of the American military equipment they were armed with to al Qaeda ( ISIS) without putting up much of a fight and often simply abandoned their troops ( who were often Shia) in the field
Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he exited Iraq
The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Frankly, I don't trust any bastard in our government who had anything to do with the Iraq invasion.
Tucker Carlson made a fool of himself trying to make a fool of Bolton. The two men are oil and water. Tucker is our Father Coughlin. Bolton is Bolton.
What?
End of story.
WOWZER!
Well said. You nailed it.
“Trump’s foreign policy is not clear.”
It’s very clear:
1. Avoid pointless and unwinnable wars that don’t directly involve vital U.S. strategic interests.
2. Quit pissing money away on futile “nationa building” efforts in shithole countries, and instead concentrate on rebuilding U.S. industrial might and rebuilding the U.S. economy.
3. Avoid entanglements in multi-lateral negotiations where each vote of each of a gaggle of Lilliputian shithole countries equals one U.S. vote, and instead negotiate via bilateral agreements.
4. Either get out of NATO or make NATO pay for itself
5. Renegotiated NAFTA.
6. Nuked the TPP within days of taking office
7. Nuked the Paris climate nonsense
8. Is defending against South American invasion of the U.S. southern border to the best of his ability, including use of military resources
9. Advocates fair trade (not so-called GOPe/RINO “free” trade) as a bedrock U.S. trading position
10. Is in the process of bringing China to its knees in trade negotiations via the use of powerful tariffs
11. Stopped unfair inflow of cheap Chinese steel into the U.S. via Canada and Mexico with tariffs.
12. Is preparing to trade with the UK on day one when it exists the EU.
13. Promotes our true allies like Poland and stands up against our fake allies like Germany and France.
14. Just negotiated a new, fair trade deal with Japan
15. Just negotiated a new, fair trade deal with South Korea
16. Prefers to attempt to engage North Korea instead of get in a war with them
17. Announced that he was going to destroy ISIS during his campaign, and then unleashed our military to do that very thing in just a few months.
18. Announced that he was a major supporter of Israel in his campaign and has proceeded to make the U.S. one of the strongest allies of Israel in U.S. history.
19. Announced that he was going to rebuild the U.S. military and make the U.S. the world’s sole superpower again both militarily and economically, and then did that in less than three years.
20. Announced that he was going to approve stalled international pipelines between Canada and the U.S. and then did that within days of entering the White House.
21. Has made the U.S. the largest energy producer in the world, with the U.S. now being a major international energy exporter, rather than being a vassal nation dependent upon energy imports from the Mideast like the U.S. was under prior regimes.
This is the clearest foreign policy of any U.S. administration in my lifetime ... what part of it is unclear to you?
It just proves that Donald Trump came to Washington to do something, not be somebody. Bill Clinton was a backwoods southern hack of a lawyer with an overactive libido. Barack Obama was nothing but a druggie street punk from Chicago with a huge chip on his shoulder and an ego to match. Even GW Bush went there to lift himself out of his father's shadow. Trump already was somebody when he went to DC. Now he's doing the job he said he'd do, as much as he can while the 'Rats in Congress tie his hands and the media crucifies him on a daily basis.
Nice to hear some specifics.
No biggie, really.
On Iraq, Bolton was right, Trump Cindy Sheehan.
But that’s way before Trump was political and a long time ago, of no relevance.
“He eviscerated Bolton with video clips of prior interviews by Tucker Carlson of Bolton. In one of them Bolton would not admit that invading Iraq was a mistake.”
It was not a mistake.
After after invasion and Saddam fell, very quickly, that’s another issue.
This is like the DU Cindy Sheehan contingent thread.
Lol.
It was irksome to see Bolton looking "down" at Trump in these photos,
lying in wait, plotting to visit his stupid neocon agenda on Trump.
Trump wasn't buying. Trump kindly called them "mistakes." Bolton is a tool of the God-awful neocons.
How he managed to slither into the Trump admin should be investigated.
Bolton was a showboater......even in Trump’s presence, sitting beside the president, Bolton screamed for attention.
How much he is like Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan. I’m not a Ron Paul fan. He had John Bolton in the Administration and he got involved with Syria a little. I agreed with him declaring victory in Syria and bringing the troops home.
Bolton was right on Iraq. I have no doubt Saddam had WMD’s. The Russians gave us a bloody nose in spiriting the majority away. I think we were betrayed by the UN over this. It’s just that the aftermath was probably inevitable. Saddam was too dangerous to leave in power but getting rid of him was much more painful than most expected. Simply because doing something causes pain later doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been done.
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