Video update by Mike’s America, a Fox News report:
[Biden] – I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
I spent — I’ve been there 17 times now. I go about every two months — three months. I know every one of the major players in all the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.
A stable government no thanks to you, Obama and Hillary:
[2007] – President Bush signed a bill Friday to pay for military operations in Iraq after a bitter struggle with Democrats in Congress who sought unsuccessfully to tie the money to U.S. troop withdrawals.
~~~Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted against the bill.
“I fully support our troops” but the measure “fails to compel the president to give our troops a new strategy in Iraq,” said Clinton, D-N.Y.
“Enough is enough,” Obama, an Illinois senator, declared, adding that Bush should not get “a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path.”
Their votes continued a shift in position for the two presidential hopefuls, both of whom began the year shunning a deadline for a troop withdrawal.
Sen. John McCain, a GOP presidential contender, said the two Democrats were embracing a “policy of surrender.”
“This vote may win favor with MoveOn and liberal primary voters, but it’s the equivalent of waving a white flag to al-Qaeda,” said McCain, R-Ariz. MoveOn.org is a grass-roots anti-war group that rose to prominence in last year’s elections.
How about Biden’s awesome idea to split Iraq up?
Iraq’s new government of national unity will not stop the deterioration. Iraqis have had three such governments in the last three years, each with Sunnis in key posts, without noticeable effect. The alternative path out of this terrible trap has five elements.
The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security.
Or his assertion that The Surge, the strategy that ultimately won the war in Iraq, was going to be a failure and should not have been implemented:
“I mean, the truth of the matter is that, that the — America’s — this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure, and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and — long enough to give political reconciliation, there’s been no political reconciliation… The reality is that, although there has been some mild progress on the security front, there is, in fact, no, no real security in Baghdad and/or in Anbar province, where I was, dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence. Sectarian violence is as strong and as solid and as serious a problem as it was before the surge started.”
But that’s not my only “dude….seriously”
Here we have one of The Four Corpsemen of the Obamaclypse, Robert Gibbs, telling the press corps that the Obama administration deserves the credit for Iraq.
Yeah, you heard me right:
Someone explain to me WHAT Obama “put back together” in Iraq? He did nothing….absolutely nothing for Iraq. He voted consistently against any kind of measure that would ensure victory and insisted troops be withdrawn before the victory was achieved.
Because of Bush there is now a democratically elected government in Iraq. Because of Bush there are millions of free people in a country that once ruled by a tyrant. Because of Bush, and his willingness to change course and listen to new ideas, we won in Iraq and THIS is why those troops can be brought home.
Nothing Obama, Biden, or anyone else in his Administration did enabled Iraq to be a success story. If the American people had listened to these fools we would have ran home with our tails between our legs like the paper tiger the rest of the world believed us to be.
Charles Krauthammer put it best tonight:
“At least this administration could have the decency to call it an American Success”
UPDATE
Remember this from six months ago?
WHERE are the Americans?” Talk to Iraqis in Baghdad these days, and you’ll likely hear the question.
Of course, everyone knows where the Americans are physically. The 130,000 US troops cantoned in a diminishing number of barracks outside the cities make their presence felt on occasion. The thousands of civilian Americans who are helping build a new Iraq are also easy to spot.
The question refers to the United States’ fast-fading political profile.
Those who deem Iraq as the biggest US foreign-policy success in decades are baffled by Washington’s determined efforts to deny that reality — indeed, whenever possible, to try to undermine it.
Having labeled Iraq the “bad war” as opposed to the “good war” in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has tried to minimize its commitment to the newly liberated nation.
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