The last American commander in
Iraq recommended to the
Obama administration that 23,000 U.S. troops remain to cement the victory, but no deal was ever reached with
Baghdad, and all combat forces went home.
That stalemate has come back to haunt the country as
al Qaeda-linked extremists, who had been defeated by 2011, have returned to
Iraq in a terrorist campaign to capture huge swaths of territory in northern and western areas.
The extremists, known as the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant (
ISIL or ISIS, for Syria), are threatening
Baghdad and could be on the verge of creating an enormous terrorist state that menaces the world.
Retired ArmyGen. John M. Keane, who advised commanders in
Iraq and helped devise the 2007 troop surge, remembers how the U.S. achieved victory by working hand in hand with
Iraq’s military to conduct pinpoint strikes. The effort was so effective that the enemy,
al Qaedain
Iraq, stopped sending killers into
Iraq because they would be exterminated quickly.
In December 2011, the U.S. military left, led by
ArmyGen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who now heads U.S. Central Command and is studying options for helping
Baghdad survive absent U.S. combat troops.
The exit was completed too soon,
Gen. Keane said.
“As we pulled out of
Iraq in 2011, just think of this: We had all our intelligence capability there. We knew where the enemy was. We were flying drones. We’re tracking them. We have signals intelligence pouring in, eavesdropping on phone conversations and the rest of it. We’re using our counterterrorism forces to bang against these guys. We’re passing that information to the Iraqis so their commandos can do the same,” the general said.
After several years of reduced violence in
Iraq, the Americans left.
“On a given day in 2011, that screen went blank. The Iraqis went from a significant amount of intelligence on what was taking place, and the screen just went blank,”
Gen. Keane said.
Mosul and
Tikrit.
Read more:
Obama ignored general s pleas to keep American forces in Iraq - Washington Times
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