Republicans fixing to blame Iraq meltdown on Obama...

[RedCloud]

I think we should have kept a larger presence in Iraq, not necessarily in a combat role but manning the air bases and keeping the ability to project American power and influence in the area.
American bombers in Iraq might have prevented the Iranians from tring to invade Iraq.

As it is, if Iraq blows up again, Obama gets the blame. Every cloud...silver lining...you know?

"American bombers in Iraq might have prevented the Iranians from tring (SIC) to invade Iraq."

IMEO, bombers would be of no avail to prevent the takeover of Iraq by the Iranians. The takeover would not be by military force but by insidious influence on the ruling government. Bombers in this case would be like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly. While you are flailing away with your hammer (Bomber ) at one fly, the rest of the house is filling up.

 

[RedCloud]

Nope, Gabe..............I was saying that Obie should have paid more attention to detail and nurtured what GW was nurturing between the sunnis and the shiites so we could get out right when we did.

But Obie ...........really doesn't know what he's doing, does he.

Yep, Jen, ole GW sho wuz a peacemaker. He was a damn good economist too!

 

[middleview]

Facts:
1. Bush negotiated the SOFA at the end of 2008. Obama tried to renegotiate and the Iraqis said no.

2. Bush ignored the request from his command on the ground for more troops to cut off Bin Laden's escape. Both the commander of Delta Force and the CIA station chief requested more troops. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were present in a briefing where that request was made and Bush was told there were not enough troops in Tora Bora to cut off Bin Laden's escape.

3. General Eric Shinseki, the Chairman of the JCS said we'd need several hundred thousand troops to invade and pacify Iraq and administration spokesmen with limited (Rumsfeld) or no military(Wolfwitz and Feith) experience conducted what can only be called a character assassination on him for disagreeing with them.

4. Bush dismissed Jay Garner and appointed Bremer. Garner, retired military with a lot of experience in the region. Bremer....political hack with no experience in the ME.

5. The Bush administration disbanded the Iraqi army counter to the advice of the US military. The result was an insurgent army already armed and trained.....

In my opinion if the SOFA as it existed was such a bad idea, then your complaint is with Bush..... Why didn't Bush include a larger military presence in the Sofa and leave that open to negotiation?

If there is going to be a war between the Sunni and Shiite....why in hell would we want our military there in the middle of it?

If Bush was doing such a great job of listening to the military, why in early 2009 did we suddenly need 70,000 more troops than we needed while Bush was still president?

 

[Sickofleft]

Obama tried to renegotiate and the Iraqis said no.

WRONG NOT FACT. He never tried, he simply (again (and for the second time) despite the advice of his military) pulled the plug.

Again keep talking about Bush maybe just maybe someone besides the base of the DNC won't notice OUR CURRENT President really

ed this up.

 

[Sickofleft]

That's funny. Richard Clarke who in the Clinton adminstration.UMMMM...where was he when the first World Trade center was bombed? The Embassies in Africa? Khobar Towers? She tried to hide his report, TRIED TO HIDE A REPORT THAT OFFRED NO SPECIFICS WHAT-SO-EVER, THAT BASICALLY SAID "BOY THESE GUYS ARE MEAN"? Got a link that proves that she tried to hide it "bubba"? Where was this great miracle of worker during the eight years of the previous adminstration when AQ was running around blowing up the planet? Where was his heartfelt..."gee whiz my bad" apologies then?

She was probably making those faces because she was thinking the samething any reasonable person should have been thinking "if its such a priority Richy, wtf have you been doing for eight years why they have bombing everything up in the f-ing world?"

Now your boy is some kind of 9/11 truther running around stating that Tenet tried to cover up some recruiting of the hijackers prior to the attacks? Something he admits he cannot even begin to prove but was still willing to make a movie about it.........WHAT A GUY!!

 

[Al Ponzi]

:clap2: Good Lord, are you really that stupid? Never mind it is likely you are.

 

[rob11b]

I do not blame "all of the world's evil on George Bush." I blame him for the Iraq war, which he started.

You should also blame the fascist bastard who kept it going for nearly three years after he should have stopped it.

That Obie bastard gets no pass.

 

[RedCloud]

Facts:
1. Bush negotiated the SOFA at the end of 2008. Obama tried to renegotiate and the Iraqis said no.

2. Bush ignored the request from his command on the ground for more troops to cut off Bin Laden's escape. Both the commander of Delta Force and the CIA station chief requested more troops. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were present in a briefing where that request was made and Bush was told there were not enough troops in Tora Bora to cut off Bin Laden's escape.

3. General Eric Shinseki, the Chairman of the JCS said we'd need several hundred thousand troops to invade and pacify Iraq and administration spokesmen with limited (Rumsfeld) or no military(Wolfwitz and Feith) experience conducted what can only be called a character assassination on him for disagreeing with them.

4. Bush dismissed Jay Garner and appointed Bremer. Garner, retired military with a lot of experience in the region. Bremer....political hack with no experience in the ME.

5. The Bush administration disbanded the Iraqi army counter to the advice of the US military. The result was an insurgent army already armed and trained.....

In my opinion if the SOFA as it existed was such a bad idea, then your complaint is with Bush..... Why didn't Bush include a larger military presence in the Sofa and leave that open to negotiation?

If there is going to be a war between the Sunni and Shiite....why in hell would we want our military there in the middle of it?

If Bush was doing such a great job of listening to the military, why in early 2009 did we suddenly need 70,000 more troops than we needed while Bush was still president?

Middleview, I agree with your post entirely but with one minor correction. General Shinseki was not the chairman of the JCS. He was the Army Chief of Staff. He was forced out of service as you indicated.

BTW, Shinseki is now Secretary of Veterans Affairs (appointed by Obama at the first of his administration).

 

[middleview]

Obama tried to renegotiate and the Iraqis said no.

WRONG NOT FACT. He never tried, he simply (again (and for the second time) despite the advice of his military) pulled the plug.

Again keep talking about Bush maybe just maybe someone besides the base of the DNC won't notice OUR CURRENT President really

ed this up.

He "never tried"? And you know this how? Here is a link you will agree with, but even it admits that there were lengthy negotiations in an attempt to keep troops in country. The negotiations failed, but it is my opinion that if the Iraqis had felt their country was in danger they'd have wanted the troops to stay. Look like they didn't.

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/27/can_obama_take_credit_for_ending_the_iraq_war_without_taking_blame_for_what_happens

 

[middleview]

Richard Alan Clarke[1] (born October 27, 1950) was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.[2] In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council. President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council. Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position, but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access. He later became the special adviser to the president on cybersecurity, before leaving the Bush administration in 2003.

The PDB specifically said that an attack using hijacked airliners was highly likely.

Here is a copy of Clarke's memo to Rice in early 2001.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/clarke memo.pdf

At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy national security adviser in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again."

I have no idea what the rest of your post is about...."blowing up everything in the world"? No kidding? So I must have missed that. While we certainly had the attack on the WTC in early 1993 (about 3 weeks after Clinton was sworn in)...I don't remember that it was attributed to Al Qaeda. The attacks on the Khobar towers, the embassies in Africa and the USS Cole were AQ operations, but Clarke was promoted to the chief anti-terror spot in 1998.

You think Rice was thinking about anti-terror at all? Prove it. What did she do that had any focus on terrorism? I'd have to say that she didn't think it was important at all. The previous post when Clarke brought up Bin Laden and was basically told that Bin Laden wasn't important...drop it.

Clarke is making a movie? Got a link about any comments related to Tenet?

 

[gabriel]

lol! this from the guy that never called shrub to account!

 

[Sickofleft]

Of course you don't know what the rest of my post is about because it has to do with the sorry ass record of the previous Adminstrations on Terrorism prior to 9/11. Again I ask where was your Clarke the left great cape crusader then? To deal with that it would mess up your narrative wouldn't, that none of this existed prior to Bush walking into the Oval.

Pull out Clarke out give him the Congressional Medal of Honor it does not change the fact that memo offered nothing specific about where or when this "something spectacular" was going to happen. Blather on some more is not going to change the fact that what he gave Rice was a historical document that again had no specifics about any future attacks.

Clarke and Tenet ..Google it, or are you just pretending you haven't already?

 

[Alinvegas]

Way back in 2003 Iraq war opponents predicted that the net result of GWB's Iraq war would be a violent, sectarian nightmare closely aligned with Iran.

And what do we have now? A violent, sectarian nightmare closely aligned with Iran.

So, the Iraq war supporters should admit their mistake and apologize for costing us tens of thousands of US casualties and trillions of dollars to produce a violent, sectarian nightmare closely aligned with Iran, right?

Nope. They will just blame it all on Obama. They are already starting to do it. How? By claiming that Obama ended the war "too soon." And which timeline has Obama used in withdrawing our troops and ending the war? The timeline GWB set down in his agreement with Iraq.

GWB's war, GWB's timeline to end the war, and the mess in Iraq is therefore Obama's fault. GOP "logic" in action.

????????????????????????????????????????

 

[Sickofleft]

I would argue that the military advised that the numbers should be around 15-25K the White House (with re-election in mind even though its less then what has been sitting in Korea for 60 years) balked. I would argue that the White House made it impossible for Maliki to get the immunity deal by making him get approval from the Pariliment and not just his office. I would argue that knowing what was needed in country that the White House floating numbers like 3k in the neogitions was an insult to the Iraqi's (not to mention our own military who had already given what would be needed). (The Iraqi people don't live in a bubble they know who President Obama is, they know left up to him Hussien is still in power (the country is far from being Switerzland but it has made progress), left up to this President again no surge in 06. )

I would also argue that while the Iraqi people did not want us there forever, they did not want us gone by the end of the year either. Sadr's people represent Iran, where Sadr himself spent the majority of the surge hiding. I also beleive Obama used the SOFA as cover to end it completely, got out, all in time for his 2012 re-election campaign. President Obama spoke to Maliki twice this year (prior to having him at the White House after the decision had been made) and the second time was to say we were leaving.

This is not about whether or not we should have ever been there to begin with, this is about did this President just flush the work our Military did in that country right down the toilet in order to keep a campaign promise. I say yes and what happens next in the country is on him, because these rampant bombings that are now taking place would not be had we still had a prescence in the country.

As I have said before, all the DNC talking points in the world are not going to change that.

 

[middleview]

I would argue that the military advised that the numbers should be around 15-25K
Argue all you'd like. Do you have any links to credible sources?

the White House (with re-election in mind even though its less then what has been sitting in Korea for 60 years) balked.

The North Koreans have never signed any document ending the war. Other than the US, who invaded Iraq? Why do our troops have to be their to prevent Iraqis from killing Iraqis?

I would argue that the White House made it impossible for Maliki to get the immunity deal by making him get approval from the Pariliment and not just his office.

I see value in getting the major parties in the Iraqi parliament to buy into the agreement. Otherwise if Maliki loses the next election the new President says "bag this deal" and our troops are subject to accusations from folks pushing the insurgency or other anti-American agendas.

I would argue that knowing what was needed in country that the White House floating numbers like 3k in the neogitions was an insult to the Iraqi's (not to mention our own military who had already given what would be needed). (The Iraqi people don't live in a bubble they know who President Obama is, they know left up to him Hussien is still in power (the country is far from being Switerzland but it has made progress), left up to this President again no surge in 06. )

I would argue that for them to think it an insult is indicative of an attitude that is unacceptable to a country that has done so much and paid so high a price for them. The idea that we should continue in a combat role is unacceptable. They have an army. They have police forces. They have run their own country for longer than America has been one. Doesn't it seem slightly arrogant to assume they need us to run their country now?


I would also argue that while the Iraqi people did not want us there forever, they did not want us gone by the end of the year either.

Are you sure you are qualified to speak for the Iraqi people? I think not. The Iraqi people have killed over 4,000 American soldiers. That hardly seems like folks who want us to stick around....so you certainly don't speak for those who participated in violence aimed at our soldiers and marines.


President Obama spoke to Maliki twice this year (prior to having him at the White House after the decision had been made) and the second time was to say we were leaving.

Really.

these rampant bombings that are now taking place would not be had we still had a prescence in the country.

bullshit. We had 150,000 troops there and the bombings were far worse. Iraqis know how to fight. Let them fight for the cause they support. If that is Islamic fundamentalism or some ME form of constitutional republic....it is up to them. It is their home and their land. Not ours.

 

[zzigzzag]

So you're applauding yourself for surrendering the point without retort.

Typical wingnut self-delusion. "I mock, therefor I'm smart." Good little ditto head.

 

[Sickofleft]

The recommendation would break a longstanding pledge by President Obama to withdraw all American forces from Iraq by the deadline. But it would still involve significantly fewer forces than proposals presented at the Pentagon in recent weeks by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, to keep as many as 14,000 to 18,000 troops there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/world/middleeast/07military.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print

I see value in getting the major parties in the Iraqi parliament to buy into the agreement

Especially with that stipulation being impossible and with your eye on 2012 keeping your campaing promise eh? Worked out becuase they can toss up there hands and claim hey they did not want us around.....to anyone who's not paying attention anyway. As for your worries about the current PM being voted out and a new one coming in, as in most things with Diplomacy you cross that bridge when you come to it.

We had 150,000 troops there and the bombings were far worse.
During the actual war absolutely, but this many to this extent since that time? We have not seen this level of violence in years.

We are not running the country we have not been running the country since Brenner (thankfully) left.

President Obama spoke to Maliki twice this year (prior to having him at the White House after the decision had been made) and the second time was to say we were leaving.
Really.

Yes Really.