As regular readers of this blog know, I have pointed out, several times over at least the past year that the reason we did not have a “Status of Force Agreement” (an agreement to leave a residual military force in Iraq) – one which would likely be preventing its current meltdown, and looming takeover by the murdering lunatics of ISIS – is that President Obama damn well did not want there to be one.
In that connection, John McCormack of weeklystandard.com has just written a very important article which lays this clear, inescapable conclusion about Mr. Obama out in a way that even his current joke of a Press Secretary would have trouble coming up with a “global tranquility”-like rebuttal.
In his article, Mr. McCormack provides us with two Barack Obamas. Here is the one who spoke just yesterday:
“Wehad offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear peoplesay, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, thatpresupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign governmentthat we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what,you\’re democratic, you\’re sovereign, except if I decide that it\’sgood for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in yourcountry, you don\’t have a choice — which would have kind of runcontrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over thecountry back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made bythe previous administration.
And here is the one who spoke during the 2012 Presidential debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney:
MR.ROMNEY:[W]ith regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that thereshould have been a status of forces agreement. Did you –
PRESIDENTOBAMA: That\’snot true.
MR.ROMNEY: Oh,you didn\’t – you didn\’t want a status of forces agreement?
PRESIDENTOBAMA: No,but what I – what I would not have done is left 10,000 troops inIraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in theMiddle East.
So which was it, Mr. President? Did you offer troops and forget the whole thing after being turned down by Iraq\’s Maliki government, or did you not offer troops because it would tie us down and not help us in the Middle East?
Those two versions cannot both be true. So one, or both, of the Mr. Obama\’s is lying.
When you read the McCormack article – as I very much hope you do – you will find that both Mr. Obama\’s were lying.
What actually happened was that our military people felt 20,000 troops should remain. But, out of concern that would still be too much of a US “occupation”, the recommendation was lowered to 10,000, which they considered the least acceptable amount.
But President Obama instead offered Iraq a residual force so small and inconsequential (3,000-4,000 troops) – so far below what our military people felt was sufficient – that it was turned down because it wouldn\’t have been enough to make a difference.
Bottom line: very little truth comes out of the Obama administration. And Mr. Obama\’s two different stories about the Status Of Forces Agreement are not among them.
Can you possibly be surprised?
