Obama: Hey, it wasn’t my idea to leave Iraq

[rangerrebew]

Obama: Hey, it wasn’t my idea to leave Iraq


posted at 6:31 pm on August 10, 2014 by Jazz Shaw


We may as well finish up the weekend on yet another inexplicable appearance by the Commander in Chief. And this one is a doozy, picked up by Joel Gehrke at The Corner. The President, during his brief, pre-tee off time availability this weekend, chose to address what a mess Iraq currently is and whether or not our lack of presence there had anything to do with it. Well, it did, but it obviously wasn’t his fault. He never really wanted to leave in the first place.


President Obama refused to take responsibility for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying that American soldiers had to pull out due to political pressure from Iraqi leaders.

“This issue keeps on coming up as if this was my decision,” Obama retorted when asked if he had any second thoughts, in light of the terrorist force taking over regions of Iraq, about having pulled all American troops out of the country. “The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because 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,” he said.

Now, normally if we wanted to refute a statement like this, we might have to go to Fox News or some conservative bastion of record keeping to find some supporting evidence. But in this case, why don’t we go straight to the horse’s mouth and check in at the White House web site.

ObamaPromiseIraq

Not good enough? How about the White House press office?


“After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011,” he said. “So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”

The government has clearly hit the petting zoo stage of planning and execution, so let’s leave the final comment to the animals.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/08/10/obama-hey-it-wasnt-my-idea-to-leave-iraq/

[NavyCanDo]

the Party Platform does not  lie........

Election Year 2008 Party Platform (FAIL)Ending the War in Iraq
We will re-center American foreign policy by responsibly redeploying our combat forces from Iraq and refocusing them on urgent missions. We will give our military a new mission: ending this war and giving Iraq back to its people. We will be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely remove our combat brigades at the pace of one to two per month and expect to complete redeployment within sixteen months. After this redeployment, we will keep a residual force in Iraq to perform specific missions: targeting terrorists; protecting our embassy and civil personnel; and advising and supporting Iraq's Security Forces, provided the Iraqis make political progress.

At the same time, we will provide generous assistance to Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons. We will launch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic surge to help broker a lasting political settlement in Iraq, which is the only path to a sustainable peace. We will make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq. We will encourage Iraq's government to devote its oil revenues and budget surplus to reconstruction and development.

Defeating Al Qaeda and Combating Terrorism
The central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was.

And from the 2012 Platform

Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq   (FAIL)

Charting a responsible path out of the war in Iraq has been a crucial element of President Obama's foreign policy and has enabled important shifts in our broader strategy.

Then-Senator Obama pledged during the 2008 campaign to responsibly end the war in Iraq, saying it was imperative to “be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in” - and that is precisely what he has done. For over half a decade, our focus on Iraq meant we had taken our eye off of al-Qaeda, and it had cost us thousands of lives, a trillion dollars, and severely strained our key alliances. When President Obama took office, there were over 140,000 American troops in harm's way in Iraq. Today, all of those forces are out of Iraq, and there are no American bases there either. The Iraqi people, in continued partnership with the United States, now have the opportunity to build a better future.

After taking office, President Obama removed our combat brigades and ended our combat mission on a 19-month timetable. And after an interim period in which we continued to advise Iraqis and conduct counterterrorism operations, we completed the drawdown of all U.S. troops last December. This decision was reached after extensive discussions and with the full agreement of the Iraqi government, and it was determined to be in the best interest of both nations. Many Republicans, including Mitt Romney, would have preferred to leave tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq in an open-ended commitment, against the will of the Iraqi government and people.

Moving forward, President Obama and the Democratic Party are committed to building a robust, long-term strategic partnership with a sovereign, united, and