After spending years bragging about the removal of troops from Iraq, Obama suddenly changed his narrative after ISIS has ripped through the country, started beheading Christian children and is promising to “raise the flag of Allah at the White House”:
It´s all George Bush´s fault.
“What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government,” Obama stated, right before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
Wait…what? Does he not think we will remember all the touting he´s done about taking troops out of the country and how it was his big campaign promise back in 2008? Now suddenly it ´wasn’t his decision´.
What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government,” Mr. Obama told reporters just before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis — a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq. So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong. But it gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.”
Mr. Obama’s new take on the 2011 troop withdrawal quickly came under fire from a number of political pundits who pointed out the irony of a president moving away, at least in part, from his signature foreign policy achievement.
Ron Fournier of the National Journal tweeted that the president is distancing himself from his own record.
“A promise he kept, and he’s running from it?” he said.
James Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and editor of OpinionJournal.com, said Mr. Obama apparently is no longer claiming credit for the removal of American forces, something that, until now, he frequently boasted about.
“Obama is not only disclaiming responsibility for the troop pullout but blaming it on George W. Bush,” he wrote Monday.
Indeed, Mr. Obama’s most recent description of the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal differs greatly from how he portrayed it in 2012, when he was running for re-election against Republican Mitt Romney.
While it’s true the administration did support keeping a small residual force in Iraq, Mr. Obama frequently took credit for fully ending American involvement in Iraq and for leaving no U.S. boots on the ground in that country.
In fact, during one October 2012 debate with Mr. Romney, the president seemed to deny that he supported a status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, a deal that would have formally allowed American troops to remain in Iraq and would have protected them from prosecution in Iraqi courts.
When Mr. Romney said he, like Mr. Obama, believed such an agreement should have been worked out, the president said “that’s not true” and went on to decry the presence of any American forces in Iraq.
“What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East. You’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean. Now, you just gave a speech a few weeks ago in which you said we should still have troops in Iraq,” he told Mr. Romney. “That is not a recipe for making sure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the Middle East.”
Source: washingtontimes.com
Photo: Jacquelyn Martin
He makes me sick!
The $#%&!@* stain is destroying America one day at a time
Have you ever known someone who CANNOT, or WILL NOT accept responsibility for his/her own actions? Children who ALWAYS blamed another child for bad behavior? When will Americans stand together and defend this country from tyranny? Our duly elected representatives are complicit in the destruction of our homeland. We deserve better!
I don’t know who this article is kidding. Ya know, back in George HW Bush’s day, during operation desert storm, George had encouraged an uprising against Saddam Hussein stating that the American coalition would go as far as to back that movement. The reasoning behind the change in policy? The advisors in the administration from the intelligence community had warned Bush I that a civil war would erupt as a byproduct of that move leaving the Kurds open to slaughter on massive levels since they were a peoples without a country stuck between the northern section of Iraq and the Turkish border. As well as sparking a battle between Sunnis and Shiites.
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, secretary of defense at the time, had been whispering in Bush’s ear, that dropping tactical nuclear warheads on Baghdad would be a feasible option to be had on the table who ironically would then go on to try and pitch an oil deal with that same regime in 1998 via Halliburton during an Iraqi US governmental sanction.
Now, HW was intelligent and diplomatically experienced enough to see that the advisors were correct in this analysis and decided to go with their call that going through with an upheaval would have far more ramifications than the overall region could endure.
So let’s fast forward to operation desert shield. Mission accomplished by the way. Many key advisors had the same sentiments that invading Iraq would only result in the same outcome projected some 20 years ago, which, turned out to be what? Here’s a clue. It starts with a t and ends with rue. Even Bush I had advised his son not to go through with it but he did anyways and that’s really ok since the world is full of blood thirsty tyrants waiting to topple at the hands of global justice but the problem is is that if you do not go into such an extreme situation without proper planning on the aftermath of toppling that said nation, you just might end up with a much more toxic situation on your hands then what you were dealing with before the decision had been made.
So I say to this article, can you prove him wrong? Because from where I stand, it’s not all that far fetched. Granted, any administration on any level of government wether it be local or federal, will have to deal with the cards they were dealt from previous choices of other administrations, but can we at least be honest with ourselves as to how the spilt milk ended up on the floor in the first place? Can we be that honest with ourselves? Or have we become so divided as a nation that we must back our political affiliated parties no matter what?
Personally I think it’s time for people from the left and from the right to come together and piece back together this nation before it becomes some far off memory of what it used to be. I dunno. That’s just me. Good luck America. You’re coming apart at the seams.
We are living on ” the planet of the apes…in the White House”
what a weinie! Atta boy, blame everyone but yourself, LOSER!
You won,t be happy when Jesus gets here..Wake up; your Not God.And The devil is Allready judged for the end so turn away from your selfish evil ways.
Sure it is Bush’s fault, you useless socialist.
Americans really are this dumb huh?
Worst president in US history.