Republicans Complain about End of Iraq War

[007]

Republicans Complain about End of Iraq War

So just in case... odumbo starts two more.

 

[rightwinger]

Fact is that yes Bush screwed up and set the timetable before he left office.

Obama has for the most part stuck to that timetable.

We have and will continue to have combat forces stationed in Kuwait ready to go right back into Iraq,
We haven't really left, just pulled back...........

Never tell your enemy on which date he will win...........

The problem is.....they live there

They know when we are pulling out whether you tell them or not

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Obama cleans up another Bush mess; the right shouldn’t complain, they should be thankful.

 

[imbalance]

Fact is that yes Bush screwed up and set the timetable before he left office.

Obama has for the most part stuck to that timetable.

We have and will continue to have combat forces stationed in Kuwait ready to go right back into Iraq,
We haven't really left, just pulled back...........

Never tell your enemy on which date he will win...........

U.S. permanent facilities

In October 2004, Iraq's interim government transferred to U.S. ownership 104 acres (0.42 km2) of land beside the Tigris River in Baghdad for construction of a new U.S. embassy. The new facility will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water. A few details of the embassy complex are available from a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, though many of the details remain secret. Its construction is budgeted at $592 million.

Besides the embassy complex, four “super bases” are being built for permanent deployment. One would be adjacent to Baghdad, two would be close to the southern and northern oil fields and the fourth would be in the west towards Syria.

The U.S. is in the process of building 14 bases known as enduring bases. Four are unknown as to name and location. The other ten are: Green Zone in Baghdad, Camp Anaconda at Balad Airbase, Camp Taji in Taji, Camp Falcon-Al-Sarq in Baghdad, Post Freedom in Mosul, Camp Victory-Al Nasr at Baghdad Airfield, Camp Marez at Mosul Airfield, Camp Renegade in Kirkuk, Camp Speicher in Tikrit and Camp Fallujuh.

History of Iraq (2003

Just in case our new puppet government flirts with the idea of taking Iraqi oil off the $USD.

 

[Si modo]

Obama cleans up another Bush mess; the right shouldn’t complain, they should be thankful.

So, who is complaining?

And, Obama is doing what was already set down. If you want to give him credit for just being a puppet for the last administration, that's fine.

 

[Full-Auto]

Obama cleans up another Bush mess; the right shouldn’t complain, they should be thankful.

by doing nothing?

 

[ScienceRocks]

We should of removed saddam and got the fuck out of there. No nation building ever again.

 

[Zander]

This is one area where I agree with Obama.

 

[rightwinger]

Obama cleans up another Bush mess; the right shouldn’t complain, they should be thankful.

We never should have gone into the god damn place in the first place

 

[ScienceRocks]

Obama cleans up another Bush mess; the right shouldn’t complain, they should be thankful.

We never should have gone into the god damn place in the first place

I'm in agreement. Maybe just sent a missle into the place saddam was.

 

[Lakhota]

Article 30 does allow for amendments to the treaty, but only in the event of the “formal written approval of both parties and in accordance with the constitutional procedures in both countries.” For the past few months, U.S. officials (including some former Bush officials called back to join the delegation) have tested the waters to see if Iraqi lawmakers would allow—or, more to the point, wanted—an amendment that would permit some of the current 40,000 American troops to stay on. Their conclusion: The Iraqis had no such desire, and not much need.

From post #37.

 

[Lakhota]

'Welcome home,' Obama tells troops from Iraq

By Tom Cohen, CNN

"For three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure," McCain said on the Senate floor.

Sharply criticizing the decision for a full withdrawal, McCain said history would judge Obama's leadership "with the disdain and scorn it deserves."

In his speech, Obama said the Iraq war was "a source of great controversy here at home, with patriots on both sides of the debate."

"It is harder to end a war than to begin one," the president continued in an apparent response to critics such as McCain.

More: 'Welcome home,' Obama tells troops from Iraq - CNN.com

 

[Londoner]

People don't get it. Opinions on the Iraq war are mediated by people's chosen media sources. When Bush was in office, the Left was instructed to hate the war (which is a happy accident because the war was poorly executed). Now that Obama is in office, the Right is manipulated to oppose his management (which is a happy accident because the same people are still in charge).

People don't understand Iraq because information is a commodity. Opinions on Iraq are bought and sold by people who have an interest in those opinions.

And . . . at this moment in world history, the Right can afford to pay more for American opinion, that is, the Right has a much more effective message machine because business would much rather support a party which lowers their taxes and regulations. Business only supports the Left when they have to, e.g., during democratic election cycles like 1994 and 2008.

Why is the Right so effective at manipulating opinion? Why is it so easy for them to fire up the Tea Party when the country has a democratic president? Why didn't we see one rally when Bush was spending the nation off a cliff? Why are there so many people who get their issues directly and exclusively from politically funded TV and radio stations? Why are so many voters politically illiterate, and know nothing about say the Cold War chess game that the US played in the Middle East?

To answer this, you have to go back many decades.

The Republican Party was in exile for nearly 1/2 a century. Indeed, the New Deal consensus controlled both parties during the postwar years. This is why Eisenhower and Nixon governed to the Left of Center - because the Liberals owned politics, media, and higher education.

(and, as a consequence, they owned American opinion)

(and they gave the middle class things like Social Security, which even Ayn Rand accepted with open arms. This was the heyday of the American Government, which not only defeated the Nazis, but brought power, water, bridges, dams, and roads to the people - creating the most successful suburban expansion in world history. Indeed, Big Government teamed with the private sector to create modern American. World class public universities sprang up from SUNY Albany to UC Berkeley - providing free or cheap education to the masses. Government provided the tools of upward mobility to the people - and, as a result, many poor families were able to send their children to great schools. A much larger percentage of Americans -i.e., Pre-Watergate & pre-Vietnam Americans - actually loved and trusted their leaders. Big government organized, funded, and lead the charge to put a man on the moon. Eisenhower - who taxed the wealthy at over 90% - built a great interstate system which expedited the movement of people and goods, leading to a great economic boom. Times were good. The private sector was bent into national service by government - and the result was the greatest economic growth in this country's history. Don't take my word for it. Research the 50s and 60s, and then research which economic model was in charge)

So yes, the Right - which represents concentrated wealth - had a real problem. They needed to undermine government in order to reclaim it from a country which believed in it.

They finally figured out how to erode the confidence postwar America had in government. They had to move the focus away from the successes of the postwar years and turn government into a corrupt incompetent mess. Only by destroying government would they be able to give wealthy people and corporate America greater tax cuts. Meaning: as long as government was failing, it would be harder to justify sending it more revenue. Therefore, the Reagan Revolution had a singular goal: convince America that our once great government was in fact a mess, i.e., switch populism from the evil corporation to the evil bureaucrat. Switch the conversation away from the moon landing and the Hoover dam. Blame government for everything bad in the world. Repeat this message every second of every day. Use 60s backlash to capture rural white America. Use Civil Rights backlash to capture the south.

To do this, they created something called movement conservatism which funneled profits into think tanks, publishing groups, PACs, newspapers, talk radio, and television stations. Money poured from business into media. They had to get the message out.

(and that is exactly what they did)

Now, the right owns the American mind. Their 30 year investment in media has been wildly successful. They shape opinion on everything, including the Iraq war. Everything is politics. Voters know nothing of geopolitics. They are educated not by text books, but men like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Welcome to the end.

 

[geauxtohell]

Fact is that yes Bush screwed up and set the timetable before he left office.

Obama has for the most part stuck to that timetable.

We have and will continue to have combat forces stationed in Kuwait ready to go right back into Iraq,
We haven't really left, just pulled back...........

Never tell your enemy on which date he will win...........

The problem is.....they live there

They know when we are pulling out whether you tell them or not

The "no shit bottom line" articulated in roughly 20 easy words. It annoys the shit out of me when people attempt to look at asymmetric warfare through conventional warfare lenses.

The bottom line is this: there will never be an official "victory" or "surrender". So eventually you are forced to plan to pull out.

I wonder if Senator McCain (as much as I respect his service, I suspect he was playing politics on this one) fancies that we'll just magically leave in the middle of the night and the last guy out will hit the lights.

It's all bullshit anyways. I would argue that Bush only got serious about a withdrawal when he realized Obama was going to win. Iraq will be, after all, his "legacy". So he might as well take as much charge of the issue as possible.

I realize Bush put the timeline in effect. Obama gets credit for making Bush's "plan" into a reality.

Though the idiotic peanut gallery on here (note: not all cons, just the typical ones) will be loath to even give him the slightest degree of credit for it.

Hell, you knew they were around the bend when they couldn't even give him credit for greenlighting the ballsiest Special Operations mission in recent memory.

 

[BluePhantom]

Not leaving Iraq so much as the inept way we are doing it.

You must know we can't take you assholes seriously when you start talking about caring about the Iraqi people and "not leave the country with things destabilized like they are" You guys have proven that you don't even give a shit about your own countrymen, let alone foreigners.

And god forbid there be some Americans like us who want our soldiers out of harms way and back home. The notion of bringing soldiers home away from bullets flying at them makes some people so angry.

Oh make no mistake. I don't give a damn about the Iraqi people. Others may but I don't. I care about protecting the petrodollar and ensuring that Iran doesn't seize the Iraqi oil fields and threaten our stranglehold on the oil trade. So long as we keep a reasonable force in Iraq to ensure that doesn't happen (which it appears we are doing) I am all in favor of pulling out.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Not leaving Iraq so much as the inept way we are doing it.

Oh, yeah, sure. Putting the troops on airplanes bound for the US. Very inept.

They're needed here, at home......​

"....those veterans filled every seat twice."

Veterans for Peace​

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