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Sickofleft
Guest
Odd the Bush Administration was able to get one in place. Just strange that the Obama Administration with the smartest people to ever walk the face of the earth involved couldn't.................1. The sticking point on the new SOFA didn't have shit to do with the makeup of the units that would remain. It was entirely about the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts over our personnel accused of crimes in Iraq. Obama was unwilling to compromise on that. It would seem that neither was Maliki. He saw that as political suicide.
Oh and your wrong, Malki would have signed but the Obama Administration insisted he get approval of the legislature. Something they knew was impossible and they got the out they needed.
The number of troops offered for starters. Obama Administration originally offered 4k troops. In a country the size of Iraq, 4k troops would have been mainly doing force protection....for themselves and themselves only.2. You keep saying it wasn't a serious offer. What was "un-serious" about it?
I never faulted Bush for going to Iraq, I faulted him for not having a plan once we tossed the place. It's as if nobody in that Administration ever asked the question "Ok, then what?"We spent billions arming and training the Iraqi army...which would have been unnecessary if Bush/Rummie had not decided to disband the Iraqi army...creating the insurgency. Why did the Iraqi army run when ISIS entered the country? Could it have been because by 2014 the leadership of the military had been gutted and replaced by inexperience cronies of Maliki's who paid as much as a million bucks for the rank?
Why would someone pay that kind of money to be a general? Because then you could get rid of the soldiers but continue to draw their pay....there were supposed to be 50,000 troops in Anbar when ISIS rolled in. The generals were the first to run...followed by the other political appointees to rank.
Which has little or nothing to do with the decisions the Obama Administration made in regards to leaving. Without our military personnel and significant force to back them up Malki could unfortunately do what ever he wanted and he did.
We won the Iraq the war, it was over. After all the missteps we were sitting pretty, we were nursing along a fledgling democracy in the heart of the Middle East, the last thing on earth countries like Iran wanted on their border.........just as we are still in South Korea, Japan and Germany we needed to stay.............
And President Obama flushed it down the toilet for a campaign slogan.
You have no way of knowing any of that. Chances are with a significant US military presence still in country, none of that ever happens and even if it did, it would have been over in about a week.None of that would have changed with US troops there. Our guys would have been the only combat units to fight ISIS....and we'd have taken a lot of casualties fighting for land the Iraqis didn't want to fight for.