Remember this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_nxouSJq9c[/youtube]
Remember this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKSb2ukQxvY[/youtube]
Remember this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLteUGkvpOc[/youtube]
By now you have no doubt seen the video of George W. Bush predicting what would happen in Iraq if the US failed to heed military leaders and cut and ran before Iraq was ready. Just in case…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyqfbjYD0mk[/youtube]
Obama has lost Iraq. He’s made the situation there worse. He was so anxious to put up a trophy on the 2012 election mantle that he blew off the advice from the head of the military in Iraq:
The last American commander in Iraq recommended to the Obama administration that 23,000 U.S. troops remain to cement the victory, but no deal was ever reached with Baghdad, and all combat forces went home.
That stalemate has come back to haunt the country as al Qaeda-linked extremists, who had been defeated by 2011, have returned to Iraq in a terrorist campaign to capture huge swaths of territory in northern and western areas.
And in so doing, Obama crippled the Iraqi army.
“As we pulled out of Iraq in 2011, just think of this: We had all our intelligence capability there. We knew where the enemy was. We were flying drones. We’re tracking them. We have signals intelligence pouring in, eavesdropping on phone conversations and the rest of it. We’re using our counterterrorism forces to bang against these guys. We’re passing that information to the Iraqis so their commandos can do the same,” the general said.
After several years of reduced violence in Iraq, the Americans left.
“On a given day in 2011, that screen went blank. The Iraqis went from a significant amount of intelligence on what was taking place, and the screen just went blank,” Gen. Keane said.
Without on-the-ground guidance, the Iraqi army, on which the Pentagon spent much money and time, folded last week — too incompetent to stand and fight for the cities of Mosul and Tikrit.
The military wanted to leave 23,000 troops as a residual force, but democrats had made Iraq a campaign cause célèbre and in the process forgot Newton’s Third Law.
Way back in 2008 the Obama regime promised that it would listen to commanders on the ground:
President-elect Barack Obama is not backing away from his campaign promise to bring all U.S. combat troops home from Iraq by late spring 2010.
But the question among sober-mined Pentagon planners is: Once he is in office, will the reality of war force him to reassess and put the brakes on a withdrawal?
Smart politicians always leave themselves an out, essentially reserving the right to right to renege on a campaign promise if conditions change.
For now, though, the transition team for the president-elect is signaling that Obama plans to fulfill his pledge to put U.S. troops on a fast track for home.
“He’ll listen to military commanders on the ground in — in Iraq, but I think that we want to withdraw,” John Podesta, co-chairman of the Obama transition team, told CNN’s John King over the weekend.
“I think he’s clear that he wants to withdraw the combat force from Iraq in a responsible way and that the time frame that he put out is, again, is consistent with where the Iraqi government is today,” Podesta said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
But U.S. commanders remain wary of pulling out of Iraq too fast..
A residual force in Iraq had been negotiated and was a possibility but Obama would have none of it:
McCain said it was the Obama administration that decided not to leave a residual force in Iraq after the troop surge, led by Gen. Petraeus, had stabilized the country.
“(Sens.) Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, and I were in Iraq, and negotiated — and the Kurds, (former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi, and (current Prime Minister Nouri) al-Maliki were ready to have the residual force,” McCain said.
“We came back, and I begged the administration to give them a (troop) number and a mission, and they wouldn’t do it. Those are just facts. We had it won, and I predicted in 2011, when we left, that there would be failure — and a colossal failure.”
Ironically, Obama plans to leave a residual force in Afghanistan.
Why not Iraq?
Obama whined about his getting “bad intel” for the growth of ISIS. If that is true, it’s because Obama himself crippled our ability to gather that intel.
Now, this feckless administration cannot even make up its mind whether we are at war or not.
Barack Obama:
200 rounds of golf
400 fundraisers
Lack of intelligence
Linked by Doug Ross and Pirate’s Cove Thank you!
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.