Obama: Pulling All U.S. Troops Out of Iraq Was Not ‘My Decision' (it was Iraq's decision)

(CNSNews.com) - When he was running for re-election in 2012, President Barack Obama repeatedly took credit for ending the war in Iraq and bringing all U.S. troops home from that country. Today, at the White House, however, when talking about his decision to use military force against the al-Qaida-related ISIS terrorist group in Iraq, Obama said that removing all U.S. troops from Iraq was not “my decision.”

“Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government,” Obama said. “In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

“And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances,” Obama said. “And on that basis, we left.

The ‘assurances’ thing is just an excuse...for sure - Obama spent so much time bashing Bush and the Iraq war to get himself elected that even if he had been smart enough to comprehend what a catastrophe a complete pullout would be, he really had no choice if he wanted to appease his "base" but to bug out all the way - once more ideology and politics outweighed the reality of the situation.

As for Maliki, he had been wanting to minimize the Sunni influence in the government since he took over, but with the US there he was held in check - the day after our last troops left, he had the Sunni vice-president arrested on trumped-up charges, and continued the purge of Sunnis including many of the best-trained army officers after that - without the leadership our military had helped develop and without our direct support in the field, it's no surprise the Iraq army virtually collapsed in the face os ISIS - Obama will never admit to the harm he has unleashed after the US had, in his own words, brought Iraq to a "sovereign, stable, and self-reliant" state......

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