Trump supporters, what would he have to say before you would not vote for him?

It's sad you think the killing of Americans is a spin.

 

the blood of ISIS victims on Obama's hands:



17,049 civilians have been recorded killed in Iraq during 2014 (up to Dec 30). This is roughly double the number recorded in 2013 (9,743), which in turn was roughly double the number in 2012 (4,622). These numbers do not include combatant deaths, which even by the most cautious tallies have also seen a sharp rise in 2014.

Too easy, and fucking sad.

 

I think ignoring the killing of Iraqis is specious.

 

Iraqbodycount.org

 

No, that's on Iraq. Iraq didn't want us there. Iraq wanted us gone.

Iraq has a similar population to California and Texas. 33 million people. Their military is 2 million strong. They need to handle it themselves.

Look how quickly you are escalating things, you want American troops in not only Iraq but now Syria and Libya. Where does it end? We need to stay the fuck out of the middle east not jump in there with more troops.

 

If Iraq doesn't like their citizens being killed then they should do something about it.

 

Another NPR article not friendly to Obama's handling of Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/19/45985...draw-from-iraq-too-soon-allowing-isis-to-grow

Still, many had real concerns al Qaeda wasn't done for. And there were some, including U.S. senators, saying the troops should stay just in case things went downhill. They say Obama should have sold the idea, hard, to Maliki.

Iraq analyst Kirk Sowell said Obama never really tried.

"This is one of the criticisms of Obama — that he sort of wanted the negotiations to fail," Sowell said, "and, so, he didn't even talk to Maliki until it was basically all over."

The State Department's lawyers said troops couldn't stay in Iraq unless the Iraqi parliament authorized them to do so, including granting them immunity from Iraqi law. The Iraqi parliamentarians would never OK such a decision, with Iraqi popular opinion staunchly against U.S. troops staying.

Sowell saw State's decision as a deliberately insurmountable obstacle.

 

Did you think about that before you posted?

 

Back then, in 2011, there was no ISIS. The group didn't exist under that name yet. There was just their predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, which had been at the forefront of the terrible insurgency in Iraq. But many thought it was licked.

"All of the intelligence that we had gathered, all of the results of the surge, all of the detainees we had in our detention system, all of the information we had coming to us from people on the ground, from the tribes indicated that al Qaeda in Iraq was defeated," said Ret. Col. Peter Mansoor, who served in Iraq.

That surge was the influx of American soldiers, and the way the U.S. military organized Sunni tribes to fight against insurgents. The Americans paid them, helped arm them and gave them air cover.

One of those tribal leaders, Sheikh Hamid Taees, told me: "In May of 2006, I worked closely with the American side to rid Anbar of terrorism and al Qaeda, and actually we killed a large number of al Qaeda fighters."

But by the time of that comment, early in 2014, al Qaeda was beginning to get a grip on Sunni areas again, including that province of Anbar.

Many Sunni sheikhs say once the American soldiers left, the minority Sunni population of Iraq suffered under a government dominated by the Shiite majority. That government stopped paying most of them, and even arrested many.

(As an aside, we should note that there was a political, as well as a military, dimension to American influence in Iraq: Obama continued to support the government even as Sunni fear and anger grew. "We were encouraged," he said in 2013, "by the work that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure that all people inside of Iraq — Sunni, Shia and Kurd — feel that they have a voice in their government."

(But they did not feel that. Sheikh Zeidan al-Jabri led a series of Sunni protests and sit-ins in Anbar, which were eventually violently dispersed by security forces at the end of 2013.

("For a year, we did not attack anyone; we were an example of democracy on an international level," he told me from exile in Jordan. "And what did the world do? The world simply turned its face from us and gave Maliki the permission to attack the demonstrations and kill hundreds of innocent demonstrators.")

So some Sunnis were drawn back to the insurgency. ISIS found supporters and gained ground. And, yes, much of that could have been prevented by a big U.S. troop presence.

 

Bad dog!

We spilled all that blood and spent all that treasure and it went for nothing because Obama surrendered.

 

I don't want troops in Syria or Libya. We should never have intervened in those places. Hiliar foreign policy on display: bomb the people into the stone age and do nothing to help. It wasn't our fight. Ridding Iraq of Saddam was our fight.

 

It was for nothing because it was a fucking stupid thing to do in the first place. Staying there forever after wouldn't have made it all peaches and rainbows.

barfo

 

That's the nice thing about this country, you are free to leave and help the Iraqis all you want. If Obama won't send Americans then Americans can send themselves. I'm sure you can get a couple of guns once you get there.

 

Why was Saddam 'our fight'?

barfo

 

Damn Obama for spilling all the blood and treasure!

 

Yellow Cake. Saddam liked twinkies while we loved the ho hos.

 

I see. Some sort of homophobic war.

barfo