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    Obama Declares End to Iraqi War

    Obama Announces Complete Drawdown of U.S. Troops From Iraq by Year’s End
    By Huma Khan | ABC News – 49 mins ago


    ABC New’s Jake Tapper reports:

    President Obama will announce today that the United States is pulling all its troop from Iraq by the end of the year.

    According to a White House official, “this deal was cut by the Bush administration, the agreement was always that at end of the year we would leave, but the Iraqis wanted additional troops to stay. We said here are the conditions, including immunities. But the Iraqis because of a variety of reasons wanted the troops and didn’t want to give immunity.

    “So that’s it. Now our troops go to zero,” the official added. “We will have a very robust diplomatic presence. But it will be a normal diplomatic presence like we have in many countries.

    “This country also wants to have its independence. They’re producing 2 ½ billion barrels of oil a day. They just paid something like $1.6 billion for something like 20 F-16s. They have a deal now with GE. By the end of next summer they will surpass Iran in oil production. They could surpass Saudi Arabia in a few years. This will impact the whole equilibrium in the Middle East. “We want to have a new relationship with this country.”

    At approximately 11:30am today, President Obama convened a secure video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to talk with him about this news, a source said.


    Watch: U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Iraq
    http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/abc-...flash-14044580
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    According to a White House official, “this deal was cut by the Bush administration, the agreement was always that at end of the year we would leave,....
    I'm very surprised they are mentioning that, now when will they drop the other shoe?.....
    Mrs Pepperpot is a lady who always copes with the tricky situations that she finds herself in....

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    So, Obama is declaring the Iraqi War over ... is it any different then the economists declaring the Recession over back in '09 ? Are we going to see a big banner stating "Mission Accomplished" ??
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    [b]Obama declares Iraq war over with all US troops home at year's end
    By Sam Youngman - 10/21/11 03:49 PM ET

    President Obama announced Friday that the U.S. will complete its drawdown of troops by the end of the year, concluding the war in Iraq after almost nine years. Obama, who sprang to national prominence with his condemnation of the war begun by his predecessor, declared in the White House briefing room that "after nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over."

    The president spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier Friday, and Obama said the two leaders are in "full agreement about how to move forward."

    Obama said he invited Maliki to the White House in December to discuss the "normal" relationship the two nations will now enjoy. "This will be a strong and enduring partnership," Obama said.

    Obama's announcement that all troops will return by year's end fulfills a campaign promise and begins to close the book on one of the longest U.S. military conflicts in history. National Security Council aide Denis McDonough said about 3,000 to 4,000 security contractors would stay in Iraq, but that all troops, beyond the standard deployment of Marines that usually guard U.S. embassies, would be gone by the end of the year.

    Obama said he would guarantee that the troops in Iraq would be "home for the holidays."

    When asked if this was the "Mission: Accomplished" moment, McDonough said: "I'll let you check your thesaurus."

    Republicans suggested Obama's decision could haunt the U.S., and Mitt Romney, a frontrunner in the GOP presidential contest, hit Obama for what he said was either a "naked political calculation" or the result of inept negotiations. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) released a toughly-worded statement in which for 2008 standard-bearer for the GOP said that while he respected Obama's decision, it marked a "harmful and sad setback" for the U.S.

    McCain said the decision would be viewed as a strategic victory for Iran, which he said had worked to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops. "It is a consequential failure of both the Obama administration—which has been more focused on withdrawing from Iraq than succeeding in Iraq since it came into office—as well as the Iraqi government."

    McCain and Romney both said the decision put the success of the last nine years at risk. The U.S. had been negotiating with Iraqi officials over leaving some troops in Iraq beyond the end of the year to help with the transition. In the end, the U.S. and Iraq could not agree on the terms for those troops, with Iraqi officials cold to the idea of immunity for soldiers remaining in their country.

    Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Obama had made the right decision to withdraw troops given the failure to reach a deal with Iraq. “I was prepared to support a continued presence of U.S. trainers in Iraq beyond the end of this year. But in light of Iraq’s refusal to eliminate the possibility that U.S. troops would face prosecutions in Iraqi courts, President Obama has made the right decision," Levin said. "While the United States will continue to have an important relationship with Iraq, that nation’s fate rests with its own people and its government, as it should,"

    Obama's victory in the 2008 Democratic primary was built in no small part on his opposition to the Iraq war. The anti-war movement latched on to Obama, favoring the upstart against Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had voted to authorize the war. But Obama disappointed those liberal supporters once in office by increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Obama argued the Bush administration had taken its focus off the Afghanistan fight and finding Osama bin laden.

    The president emphasized in his comments Friday that troops are also drawing down in Afghanistan, saying that when he took office there were more than 180,000 troops deployed in both wars. By the end of the year, Obama said, that number will be halved. He also said troops would continue to return home under his watch. "And make no mistake, it will continue to go down," Obama said, declaring that "the tide of war is receding."

    MoveOn.org, in a statement that did not mention Obama, praised the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but said troops from Afghanistan should join them at home.

    While the Bush administration agreed to a deal with Iraq's government to pull the remaining U.S. troops from the country by the end of 2011, it had been somewhat unclear whether this timeframe would be followed.

    Obama said that he and the Iraqi government will "continue discussions" on how to continue training and equipping Iraqi forces.

    The initial reaction from lawmakers to Obama's decision was mixed.

    Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. and Iraq can be proud of all that has been achieved since 2003, the year the war began. but he expressed concern that the full withdrawal will make the road to recovery in Iraq tougher. "Multiple experts have testified before my committee that the Iraqis still lack important capacities in their ability to maintain their internal stability and territorial integrity," McKeon said. "These shortcomings could reverse the decade of hard work and sacrifice both countries have endured to build a free Iraq."

    Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) hailed the leadership of both Obama and President Bush in ending "a violent terrorist insurgency that threatened the Iraqi people, and provided an opportunity for the Iraqi government to build the capacity needed to effectively meet the needs of the country. He said he was "concerned" a full withdrawal could jeopardize gains, but hopeful the U.S. and Iraq could work together to guarantee that a free and democratic Iraq remains a stable partner of the U.S. in the Middle East.

    Obama closed his comments on Friday by summing up other foreign policy successes, including Thursday's news from Libya, and saying that America is leaving Iraq from "a position of strength."

    Now, Obama said, the task for our veterans will be enlisting them in rebuilding the U.S. economy. "After a decade of war, the nation that we need to build — and the nation we will build — is our own," Obama said.

    Obama's announcement doesn't mean there won't still be a U.S. presence in Iraq.

    The U.S. has an embassy and two consulates in the country, and the State Department has long been scheduled to take over the lead role for the U.S. mission in Iraq.

    Foggy Bottom officials have been quietly building what some lawmakers have called a "private security force" that will be charged with keeping American diplomats and U.S. facilities safe once military troops are withdrawn.

    While the White House put the likely number of private security contractors who will be in Iraq come Jan. 1 at 4,000 to 5,000, Senate Armed Services Committee member Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said Wednesday that she understands that 14,000 of the 17,000 State Department personnel that will be in Iraq after the military withdrawal could be private contractors.

    John T. Bennett contributed to this story.


    http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...e-at-years-end
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    Did President Obama want American military troops to remain in Iraq?
    By Laura Rozen - Senior Foreign Affairs Reporter The Envoy – 4 hrs ago



    Why did President Barack Obama announce Friday that he has decided to end the American troop presence in Iraq by the end of the year?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Z7t...layer_embedded

    The United States had been negotiating with Iraqi leaders for months on a possible continuing military presence in Iraq. But the negotiations stalled over a key hitch: Iraqi leaders refused to comply with Washington's insistence that any American forces serving in Iraq be granted legal immunity in that country.

    "The end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition," Obama said Friday, noting that the number of American troops deployed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has decreased from 180,000 when he took office to less than half that by the end of this year. "The tide of war is receding."

    On Jan. 1, the United States and Iraq will have a "normal relationship between sovereign nations, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect," Obama said.

    Over the summer, however, the United States was asking to keep 10,000 troops in Iraq next year. "This was well below the 20-30,000 troops that military experts believed optimum," Ken Pollack, a member of Bill Clinton's National Security Council who wrote an influential book advocating war with Iraq, wrote in an analysis distributed by the Brookings Institution. "Just a few weeks ago, the Administration then unilaterally decided to cut that number down to about 3,000. There was nothing that 3,000 troops were usefully going to do in Iraq. No mission they could adequately perform from among the long list of critical tasks they have been undertaking until the present. At most, they would be a symbolic force, that might give Tehran some pause before trying to push around the Iraqi government." Pollack continued:

    However, even playing that role would have been hard for so small a force since they would have had tremendous difficulty defending themselves from the mostly-Shi'ah (these days), Iranian-backed terrorists who continue to attack American troops and bases wherever they can.

    At that point, it had become almost unimaginable that any Iraqi political leader would champion the cause of a residual American military presence in the face of popular resentment and ferocious Iranian opposition. What Iraqi would publicly demand that Iraq accommodate the highly unpopular American demands for immunity for U.S. troops when Washington was going to leave behind a force incapable of doing anything to preserve Iraq's fragile and increasingly strained peace? Why take the heat for a fig leaf?

    Of course, the truth was that the Iraqi government itself had already become deeply ambivalent, if not downright hostile to a residual American military presence. Although it was useful to the prime minister to have some American troops there as a signal to Iran that it shouldn't act too overbearing lest Baghdad ask Washington to beef up its presence, he and his cohorts probably believe that they can secure the same advantages from American arms sales and training missions. The flip side to that was that the American military presence had become increasingly burdensome to the government--challenging its interpretation of events, preventing it from acting as it saw fit, hindering their consolidation of power, insisting that Iraqi officials adhered to rule of law, and acting unilaterally against criminals and terrorists the government would have preferred to overlook. All of this had become deeply inconvenient for the government.
    Though there have been reports for weeks that American-Iraqi negotiations were stuck on that and other disagreements, Pentagon officials had always discounted those reports as premature, saying negotiations were still continuing.

    And it's worth noting that, in the details of the arrangement Obama announced Friday, the United States will maintain an Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq, which will consist of hundreds, if not thousands of American defense personnel.

    There were other signs of wiggle room in Obama's announcement. "As I told Prime Minister Maliki, we will continue discussions on how we might help Iraq train and equip its forces, again, just as we offer training and assistance to countries around the world," Obama said Friday. "After all, there will be some difficult days ahead for Iraq and the United States will continue to have an interest in an Iraq that is stable, secure and self-reliant."

    Still, Obama's announcement Friday does not represent only a linguistic sleight of hand, for either country. Almost nine years after the American invasion to topple Saddam Hussein--and in the year since popular uprisings began to topple a succession of the Middle East's long-entrenched dictators and autocrats from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, not primarily at the hands of the American military but by the power of those countries' own people--the United States and Iraq will finally be able to have a "fresh start" to their post-war relationship, as Obama put it Friday.

    "The United States is fulfilling our agreement with an Iraqi government that wants to shape its own future," John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement Friday. "We are creating a new partnership that shifts from a clear military focus to a new relationship that is more expansive, hinging on increased diplomatic, economic and cultural relations."

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/di...210202850.html
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    The Cost of War: Iraq by the Numbers
    By AMY BINGHAM October 21, 2011


    It has been nine years since former President George W. Bush announced that the United States was going to war in Iraq. Today President Obama declared that that war was coming to an end. "The rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year," Obama said. "After nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over."

    Here's a by-the-numbers look at both the monetary and human costs of the war in Iraq.

    Casualties : 4,482

    To date, 4,482 Americans have been killed in Iraq. Virginia National Guard Staff Sgt. James R. Leep Jr., 44, was the most recent casulaty, dying of noncombat related injuries Monday.

    Wounded : 32,213

    There have been 32,213 U.S. troops wounded in the Iraq War, a war that, according to a January 2011 Gallup poll, 66 percent of Americans oppose.

    Troops Currently in Iraq : 39,000

    As of last week there were 39,000 troops currently deployed to Iraq. The president annouced today that every one of those men and women would be "home for the holidays."

    In August 2010, nearly three-fourths of Americans supported the removal of combat troops from Iraq, according to an ABC News poll.

    Price Tag : $704.6 billion

    From the beginning of operations through July 31, 2011, the Department of Defense has allocated $704.6 billion for Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn. That comes out to about $3.8 billion per month.

    Comparatively, the decade-long War in Vietnam cost $738 billion in current 2011 dollars, according to the Congressional Research Service.


    Post-War Personel : 9,500

    About 5,000 security contractors and 4,500 so-called general life support contrators will operate in Iraq after U.S. combat troops return home. General life support contrators will provide food and medical services as well as operate the aviation assets.

    There are currently about 9,500 security contractors in Iraq and several thousand general life contractors. At its peak in June 2009, the Department of Defense had 15,200 security contractors in Iraq.

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cost-...?id=14788211#5

    comments

    'Wow.$704 BILLION$Less than Obama's Failed Stimulus package...

    ...

    Is it just me ... or did this read more like it came out of Obama's campaign office rather then a news agency...

    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    Obama warm to scientists, cold to soldiers
    The Daily Caller – Fri, Oct 21, 2011tweet4Share0EmailPrintPolitics slideshowsTunisians vote in first free election
    22 photos - Fri, Oct 21, 2011Spain's Basque region holds separatist rally
    7 photos - 20 hrs agoOccupy Melbourne Protesters Clash with Police
    8 photos - Sat, Oct 22, 2011See latest photos »Two of President Barack Obama’s public appearances Friday provided a study in his starkly contrasting attitudes toward two very different constituencies: the scientific community and the United States military.

    First, the president fulfilled his campaign promise to pull U.S. forces from Iraq by announcing the withdrawal of all troops by the end of 2011. His subdued briefing came from the dark blue White House press podium.

    Less than two hours later, however, he used the bright and gilded East Room of the White House to formally present awards to top-flight scientists. After a military honor guard formally saluted the nation’s colors, Obama declared: “Thanks to the men and women on the stage, we are one step closer to curing diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s … I hope everybody enjoys this wonderful celebration and reception, and again, thank you so much for helping to make the world a better place.”

    The president’s tone was markedly different as he announced the troop withdrawal, focusing more on regret than on victories won.

    “As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war to a responsible end … After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” he said at the start of his brief, flat-toned presentation. “There will be some difficult days ahead for Iraq … Here at home, the coming months will be another season of homecomings.”

    Obama is already campaigning for re-election, and the troop withdrawal from Iraq will please the important progressive wing of the Democratic Party. That liberal faction boosted him into the presidency after he declared in 2002 that the proposed removal of Iraq’s dictator would be a “dumb war.”

    Progressives consistently laud science and scientists, however. (RELATED: Romney, Bachmann call Iraq withdrawal a political decision)

    “One of the best ways we can inspire more young people to think big, dream big dreams, is by honoring the people who already do: folks who are smart and aren’t afraid to show it, but also folks who have taken that brilliance and gone out and changed the world,” Obama said, before a military aide read commendations while he placed medals on 12 U.S. and foreign-born scientists.

    “It’s important to recognize that work, and to help make it easier for inventors and innovators like them to bring their work from the lab to the marketplace and create jobs,” Obama beamed.

    Instead of providing similar praise for the accomplishments of U.S. troops, however, Obama emphasized their suffering. “This December will be a time to reflect on all that we’ve been though in this war,” he said, not to celebrate the campaign’s accomplishments.

    Obama did not mention Iraq’s deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, nor the success of seeing democratic elections, nor the emergence of the long-suppressed Shia majority, nor the U.S. military’s remarkable victory against the coalition of Hussein’s die-hards, Sunni tribes, Iranian gunmen and Syrian-aided Islamist suicide bombers.

    The most poignant moment came in a subsequent briefing by deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough. He said that during a morning video conference with the White House, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki showed “what appeared to me to be genuine appreciation of the sacrifice … that the troops and their families have put on the line for Iraq’s future.”

    More than 4,500 U.S. and allied troops lost their lives — and nearly 30,000 sustained injuries — trying to establish and protect democracy in Iraq.

    During his brief appearance, Obama did not mention al-Qaida’s strategic defeat in Iraq, coming as a result of Arabs’ collective recoil from Islamists’ suicide bombings aimed at other Arabs in Iraq’s cities and towns.

    Despite growing opposition from ordinary Arabs and Muslims, al-Qaida used those shocking tactics because it believed that Bush’s plan to establish democracy in Iraq would be an ideological defeat of its core belief that the Arab world should be ruled by a Baghdad-based Muslim theocratic dictator — dubbed the caliph.

    “The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation,” said a 2004 message from Osama bin Laden. That war, he said, urging Islamist gunmen to fight in Iraq, “is raging in the land of the two rivers. The world’s millstone and pillar is in Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate.”

    The “land of the two rivers” is Iraq, whose geography is framed by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

    Now those gunmen and bin Laden are dead. And the capital of the would-be caliphate is under the secure control of an elected government and army led by Shia Muslims, who al-Qaida considers heretics.

    During the Democratic presidential primary, Obama showed his opposition to the Iraq campaign by promising to withdraw U.S. troops, even if the departure resulted in a bloody civil war.

    “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama told the Associated Press.

    “It was the dominant issue [in the 2008 race and] … then-Senator Obama took a very clear position,” a White House spokesman said at Friday’s press conference.

    Obama did include some brief references to the trials of U.S. troops.

    “The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high, proud of their success,” he said, before he depicted the soldiers as wounded and in need of help from domestic government programs. “We’ll honor our many wounded warriors and the nearly 4,500 American patriots — and their Iraqi and coalition partners — who gave their lives to this effort … we’ll never stop working to give them and their families the care, the benefits and the opportunities that they have earned.”

    Obama also played up U.S. diplomats’ role moving forward. “With our diplomats and civilian advisers in the lead,” the president said, “we’ll help Iraqis strengthen institutions that are just, representative and accountable.”

    The president’s remarks ended with a call for Americans to turn inwards. “After a decade of war,” he said, “the nation that we need to build — and the nation that we will build — is our own.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/obama-warm-sci...215053300.html

    The president’s remarks ended with a call for Americans to turn inwards. “After a decade of war,” he said, “the nation that we need to build — and the nation that we will build — is our own.”
    Does this mean he will also be calling back the troops he sent to Afghanistan, Libya, Uganda, Sudan and parts of Africa ??

    comments

    Another propaganda piece - take it for what it's worth; nothing.... a piece of journalistic garbage.

    ...

    Another opinion piece disguised as journalism. Any war is a sober, and somber event. The reality is that all our brave troops are coming home to NO JOBS! That is sad and solemn. Are we going to post them on our Borders ??

    ...

    I've seen a few libs spouting the tired old "War for Oil" rhetoric...

    Where is the oil?
    It costs me $20 to fill up my 5.5 gal motorcycle fuel tank.

    The cost of gas DIDN'T drastically drop after 1991's Desert Storm...
    There is NO OIL in Afghanistan...
    It's been 8 yrs in Iraq, and gas prices haven't dropped dramatically, in fact they have skyrocketed over 100 % in this time...
    In fact, Libyan oil going to Europe was the reason for NATO involvement in Libya, which was the ONLY military actions Obama has supported. Facilitated in fact.

    Until you Libs can show me the "Ill-gotten wartime oil" you've been screamin about for the last 20 years, none of your other arguements are holding water, or oil.

    ...

    It is sad to me that this article was the way I found out that scientists had been honored at all
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    My husband and I believe this was a reelection stunt. It won't help me vote for him again.
    Lord, keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.

    An 'eye for an eye' leaves the whole world blind. -Mahatma Gandhi

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    What's funny is that all the reports were that negotiations for immunity of prosecution of Americans broke down, therefore, since our soldiers could be prosecuted over there, Obama decided to bring them home. Does that mean if negotiations were successful, he would have kept them there? I guess we owe our troops coming home to Iraq's decision.

    ....but hey, he'll take credit for it anyway.......even if it was the Bush plan to begin with.
    Mrs Pepperpot is a lady who always copes with the tricky situations that she finds herself in....

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    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    Breaking: Obama finds out about Iraq crisis from the newspaper
    Written by Allen West on June 13, 2014

    President Obama is making a speech about the situation in Iraq, which he just found out about by reading yesterday’s paper.

    As he is giving that speech, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Force is deploying in Iraq to protect Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf, preparing to fight ISIS Islamic terrorists. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...hdad-live.html

    Consider this perfect example of Obama administration rhetoric from State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, “We’ve encouraged Iran to play a constructive role in Iraq.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/...s-in-iraq.html

    And so Iran took that advice to heart. This is really bad theater and Obama has once again taken the stage again to deliver a really bad performance.

    The only words from Obama which will make a difference will be his support of airstrikes against these barbaric savages to stem their advance. Anything else is just whistling Dixie, as we say down South. Just doin’ nothing.

    http://allenbwest.com/2014/06/breaki...Tu2lsVACVmb.99



    Translation for Obama’s options on Iraq
    Written by Allen West on June 13, 2014




    Obama said he is going to consider options for Iraq. Let me translate.

    Option one, you close down the US Embassy and flee today.
    Option two, you close down the US Embassy and flee tomorrow.

    Today’s speech was vintage Obama: more words, more talk, and no solutions. It is up to the Iraqis to solve their problems? Then why Mr. President did you violate the War Powers Act and provide military support to islamists in Libya?

    Obama says, “We should look at the situation carefully” — well, what red lines does he need? It would have been better for Obama to say nothing — or maybe it doesn’t matter because in giving a speech, he said nothing anyway.

    Is the Syrian Civil War overflowing into Iraq? Obama responded, “that’s been happening for some time.” Yes, Obama, it is a long-term problem, one which you created and could have been avoided.

    http://allenbwest.com/2014/06/transl...TjhcT5RgmdO.99




    Obama’s plan for Iraq: Let Iran deal with it
    Written by Allen West on June 13, 2014



    While running this morning, I pondered President Obama’s words yesterday on the situation in Iraq. First of all, let me clearly state: wanting to defeat Islamic totalitarianism does not make anyone a “warmonger.” As a matter of fact, it aligns you with a long line of historical figures such as Charles “the Hammer” Martel and the Germanic and Polish Knights who stood at the gates of Vienna. So here we are in the 21st Century and echoes of the past are reverberating.

    Obama declared the war in Iraq over but what he failed to realize is that there is a greater war against Islamism and Iraq was just a singular theater of operations — and of course, the enemy always has a vote.

    A lack of strategic vision created a vacuum and it is now being filled. Our options are truly non-existent. When Obama states, there will be no “boots on the ground,” then there cannot be any effective air strikes coordinated as part of a ground assault. The enemy can only move forward on a couple of road networks, so it would be easy to halt their advance. But Obama says he is considering a counter-terrorism fund instead.

    I have to ask, why are we denying military support to the current government of Iraq, a nation-state which we helped to form, yet we gave Islamist forces military support in Libya — and in violation of the War Powers Act?

    Could it be that in “pivoting away from the Middle East” Obama intentionally sought to enable Islamist forces in the region? He sent military and materiel support to Islamists in Libya along with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt while turning his back on combating the resurgent Islamists in Iraq — talk about confusing.

    Regardless, history will detail how America turned victory into defeat on the modern battlefield against Islamic terrorism. Iran already has its al-Quds force leader in Baghdad — signs of things to come. Iraq has become a satellite state of Iran and I don’t think they’re willing to see it fall. It’s part of their regional hegemony and would give them an extension from Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. And when we flee Afghanistan, Iran will seek to extend its regional dominance to the east — of course the Iranians will have to contend with Pakistan — who already has nukes.

    To the north we have Turkey and its leader Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose efforts certainly are supportive of Islamists.

    What is playing out in the Middle East — due to Obama’s retreat– is a struggle for dominance in the Islamic world. It entails three major actors: the historical hegemony of Saudi Arabia, the last Islamic caliphate known as the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and the pre-Islamic empire of Persia, today Iran. The major schism is indeed along the Sunni (Saudi Arabia and Turkey) versus Shia (Iran) lines of separation. However, they would all unite against the smaller and greater satins: Israel and America.

    But there is also another key western ally that is caught up in the middle of this — a valuable friend, the Kurds. The Kurdish people are possibly the world’s largest ethnic group without a homeland — albeit with a definitive autonomy. Along with the Kurds they are the other historical Christian groups in the region the Assyrians (once a powerful empire under King Nebuchadnezzar) and the Chaldeans.

    Kurdish resolve has already been demonstrated. As the Iraqi government fled Kirkuk, the Kurdish Army, the Peshmerga, took up positions and stemmed the Islamic terrorist attack. An airborne assault landing into Kurdish-held territory would be ideal in order to hit the enemy in the rear — but then again, we’ve been told no boots on the ground. But if I were in charge, I would get behind the Kurds and their efforts to secure their own state — something that would get Erdogan’s attention.

    It seems the only real option for the U.S. will be to depend on Iran in order to save face in Iraq.

    Now I know lots of folks would rather talk about the relationship between Beyonce’s sister and Jay-Z — including Obama — but somebody needs to be working on a regional strategic vision.

    http://allenbwest.com/2014/06/obamas...R86Eg1p14tr.99
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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