Jeb Bush Unlikely To Be President

[icenine]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7279970.html



I just don't think he can get past this.


This stuff about blaming Obama is just lying to the highest order.
Malaki would not give the USA a SOFA agreement. And besides the amount of US involvement right now is the about the same number of troops we were going to leave behind anyway.

I feel sorry for Jeb Bush in a way. His brother should be taking the heat for Iraq not him.

[whell]

Originally Posted by icenine

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_7279970.html

This stuff about blaming Obama is just lying to the highest order.
Malaki would not give the USA a SOFA agreement. And besides the amount of US involvement right now is the about the same number of troops we were going to leave behind anyway.

What are you talking about?

First, I agree Jeb won't get the nomination. Now that that's out of the way:

The negotiations on the SAFU agreement are far more involved than your simple description above. Obama never wanted to leave a large force in Iraq anyway. Even if we left 3500 troops in Iraq, its certainly debatable whether or not they would have been equipped sufficiently to deploy and engage ISIS. The 2000 or so there now are having modest impact.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/wo...iraq.html?_r=0

But there was no agreement. Some experts say that given the Iraqis’ concerns about sovereignty, and Iranian pressure, the politicians in Baghdad were simply not prepared to make the hard decisions that were needed to secure parliamentary approval. Others say the Iraqis sensed the Americans’ ambivalence and were being asked to make unpopular political decisions for a modest military benefit.

On Oct. 21, Mr. Obama held another videoconference with Mr. Maliki — his first such discussion since the talks began in June. The negotiations were over, and all of the American troops would be coming home.

The White House insisted that the collapse of the talks was not a setback. “As we reviewed the 10,000 option, we came to the conclusion that achieving the goal of a security partnership was not dependent on the size of our footprint in-country, and that stability in Iraq did not depend on the presence of U.S. forces,” a senior Obama administration official said.

It is too soon to fully assess that prediction. But tensions have increased to the point that Mr. Barzani has insisted Mr. Maliki be replaced and Iraq’s lone Sunni vice president has fled to Turkey to avoid arrest.

Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid.

[Rajoo]

Obama made a campaign promise to end the Iraq war and kept his promise. 'Democratically elected Iraqi government turned down the offer of retaining 10,000 US troops. Now Iraq owns the consequences of it's decisions. End of story.

The question remains and will always remain why did the US invade Iraq.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...subjects/iraq/

[finnbow]

To blame anyone other than Dubya starting the war (and his subsequent selection of al-Maliki) is revisionism of the first order.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

The question remains and will always remain why did the US invade Iraq.

Why? Different people had different reasons, but the main one was that the neo-imperalist neocon faction gained power, and they had this vision of dominating the world and making everyone do what we want through the threat of military power. They thought making an example of someone was the thing to do, and they picked Iraq.

[Rajoo]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Why? Different people had different reasons, but the main one was that the neo-imperalist neocon faction gained power, and they had this vision of dominating the world and making everyone do what we want through the threat of military power. They thought making an example of someone was the thing to do, and they picked Iraq.

Somehow I have this suspicion that deposing Saddam Hussein was family feud. There was no other reason to invade Iraq. At that time our enemy was Al Qaeda headed by OBL who had declared an open season of terrorism again the West, primarily the US. And he was in Afghanistan and we did not get him then or there.

Instead we went to Iraq and lost there and/or enabled the infighting between the Sunni's and Shia. Now the terrorist factions have multiplied, ISIS being just one. So why all the focus on just ISIS? We sure as hell armed all these factions directly or indirectly and continue to do so.

Let the neocons lick their wounds instead revising history.

[icenine]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

Obama made a campaign promise to end the Iraq war and kept his promise. 'Democratically elected Iraqi government turned down the offer of retaining 10,000 US troops. Now Iraq owns the consequences of it's decisions. End of story.

The question remains and will always remain why did the US invade Iraq.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...subjects/iraq/

Yes pretty clear. Imagine if Obama had left troops there and one of them was put on trial in an Iraqi court. I am sure the GOP would have understood.

[icenine]

Besides if we have to leave US troops behind in Iraq so that nation can survived that is a failure anyway. I guess Whell has not read about the last artificial nation we tried to save: South Vietnam.

[Rajoo]

Originally Posted by icenine

Besides if we have to leave US troops behind in Iraq so that nation can survived that is a failure anyway. I guess Whell has not read about the last artificial nation we tried to save: South Vietnam.

Originally Posted by BeamOn

Instead we went to Iraq and lost there and/or enabled the infighting between the Sunni's and Shia. Now the terrorist factions have multiplied, ISIS being just one. So why all the focus on just ISIS? We sure as hell armed all these factions directly or indirectly and continue to do so.

Let the neocons lick their wounds instead revising history.

Agreed, Iraq was a lost cause (and a lost war) once the Al Maliki Government took power.

I have a suspicion that the GOP knew we had lost Iraq but would have preferred that the Obama administration had kept the troops around to camouflage the sins of GW. What other economic ($2 Trillion lost already) or political (Iran/Shia had taken over) sense would it have made to keep our troops around other than getting them killed.

Just take a look at how all of the major GOP candidate for President is claiming now that the decision to invade Iraq was wrong except Jeb.

[icenine]

A quote from Der Speigel, which is from the article I linked to in the OP:

"In 2010, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir and later "caliph," the official leader of the Islamic State. They reasoned that Baghdadi, an educated cleric, would give the group a religious face.

Bakr was "a nationalist, not an Islamist," says Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, as he recalls the former career officer, who was stationed with Hashimi's cousin at the Habbaniya Air Base. "Colonel Samir," as Hashimi calls him, "was highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician." But when Paul Bremer, then head of the US occupational authority in Baghdad, "dissolved the army by decree in May 2003, he was bitter and unemployed."

Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies. Bakr went underground and met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth, had previously run a training camp for international terrorist pilgrims in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003, he gained global notoriety as the mastermind of attacks against the United Nations, US troops and Shiite Muslims. He was even too radical for former Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi died in a US air strike in 2006."