Obama's total withdrawal from Iraq, combined with the crises that IS has is causing the Iraqi military and government is the reason Iran has been able to increase its influence in Iraq. Had Obama kept the US military in Iraq and prevented what IS has done the past two months from happening, Iranian influence in Iraq today would be much smaller.
Iraq has turned more and more to Iran because OBAMA essentially abandon Iraq after 2011!
Except it was President Bush who signed the agreement
withdrawing our troops completely by 2012.
Had the Iraqi given in on the immunity issue President Obama would have
left troops on the ground.
Great observations! You forgot a few small details, though: The US never completely withdrew from Iraq, never intended to completely withdraw from Iraq, and it has been the US government's intent to re-invade Iraq since before the PR stunt of withdrawing earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States_in_Baghdad
The Embassy of the United States of America in Baghdad is the diplomatic mission of United States of America in the Republic of Iraq. At 104 acres (42 ha), it is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and is nearly as large as Vatican City.
The embassy is a permanent structure which has provided a new base for the 5,500 Americans currently living and working in Baghdad. During construction, the US government kept many aspects of the project under wraps, with many details released only in a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.[8] Apart from the 1,000 regular employees, up to 3,000 additional staff members have been hired, including security personnel.
With construction beginning in mid-2005, the original target completion date was September 2007. "A week after submitting his FY2006 budget to Congress, the President sent Congress an FY2005 emergency supplemental funding request. Included in the supplemental is more than $1.3 billion for the embassy in Iraq ..." An emergency supplemental appropriation (H.R. 1268/P.L. 109-13), which included $592 million for embassy construction, was signed into law on May 11, 2005. According to the Department of State, this funding was all that was needed for construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.[9] However, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post found that the new embassy had cost more than $700 million by 2012,[10] and Business Insider reported in 2013 that the cost of the embassy had surpassed $750 million.[11] The Obama administration requested more than $100 million for a "massive" upgrade to the embassy compound in 2012.[12]
Oh, and there's also the matter of the garrison at the "embassy," which at nearly the same size of the Vatican, is more of an enclave or military base than an "embassy," especially when you consider that diplomatic workers are in the minority there.
June 16, 2014: "Obama announces 275 troops to deploy to Iraq for embassy security in Baghdad"
June 30, 2014: "Latest deployment adds 300 troops, including 100 whom administration had pre-positioned outside Iraq on standby"
July 1, 2014: "The U.S. military has deployed a further 200 troops to reinforce security in Baghdad, it was disclosed Monday. U.S. Department of Defense said a detachment of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, would bolster the U.S. military presence."
And this isn't a recent thing, either. We've been sending troops in since we officially "pulled out" (except for the massive military base masquerading as an embassy).
September 24, 2012: "Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."
The US currently has thousands of mercenaries at our embassy/military base in addition to the hundreds of troops there, and roving bands of more soldiers going on "training missions" at various places in Iraq, on top of the Special Ops unit the Iraqi government formally authorized.
The Iraqi government never wanted us out, the US government never wanted out, and we never were out. Don't buy into big media spectacles; the war in Iraq never ended.
The logical extension of all of these facts is a bit more ominous and less palatable for the average person. The US
purposefully staged a tactical retreat in order to leave Shi'a Iraq vulnerable for take over by the US's own American-funded, American-supplied, American-trained Sunni Muslim militants.
