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contrast the stability level as George W. Bush was leaving office and what it is now six years into Barack Obama.
You don't get to go from barely a whiff of sectarian strife prior to March 2003 and produce the sectarian warfare that peaked in 2006 plus al Qaeda moving into the political vacuum that Bush created, and then use 2008 as some kind of baseline with 150,000 US troops still in country. Then take that baseline when Bush signs an agreement to withdraw all troops out of cities by June 2009 and use it as a club to beat on Obama's head. You can't use the 2008 baseline when Bush essentially agreed that after 2008 the Iraqis were empowered to decide every military operation US troops could carry out. Bush did not have that same restraint that he forced onto his successor. You can't use the 2008 baseline when Bush agreed to a final deadline for all troops to be out of Iraq before 2012. That meant his successor was required by the Bush agreement to start planning withdrawals and closing bases and all the logistics that coincide with leaving by a date certain.
Yes the calm in 2008 is not the proper baseline. The proper baseline is a time when zero US troops were on the ground in Iraq. That was when UN inspectors were on the ground in Iraq the first 2.5 months of 2003.
Bush started the war and did not return Iraq to its 2003 stability. Then he agreed to withdraw all troops by the end of 2011. You want to bitch about Daesh in Iraq butch at Bush. They got their start Obama Bush's watch and he did not destroy them. Just like he did not kill Bin Ladin.
You may also recall the sorry shape of the US economy during Bush's final months in office. Do you know how much it costs to keep 150,000 US troops in a combat and supportive role in Iraq?
So you cluttered-with-hate-brained morons expect that Obama maintain the same level of stability after 2008 with far less troops and the ones still there were not permitted to go into cities or any other missions except the ones approved by Maliki - friend of Iran and Shiite partisan - a very shitty prime minister of Iraq who wanted US troops gone.
If it took Bush 150,000 US troops to achieve the 2008 level of stability and to maintain it, you cannot expect any President afterward to maintain that level of stability in a corrupt partisan governmental environment with a declining number of troops packing things up and preparing to leave on a timeline that Bush put in place.
But that is the absurd expectation by many a rightwing hater in America from sea to shining sea.