Brandon

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Obama Totally AWOL on Iraq

His goal all along was to pull out U.S. troops no matter what the long term consequences!

It used to be that Democrats said "listen to the generals" when it came to managing military affairs in Iraq. While campaigning for President, then Senator Obama suggested he would listen to the generals.

Yet, he has repeatedly overruled the military on policy for Iraq and Afghanistan. And now, the final pullout from Iraq is going forward despite clear military advice to the contrary.

No one should be surprised by any of this. After all, Iraq largely disappeared from the daily flow of news shortly after Obama was elected. Some of this was due to the good news that we had mostly won (which the "news" media wasn't about to report) but some of this was also due to the fact that Obama didn't appear to care what happened in Iraq one way or the other.

Instead of negotiating a long term military agreement with Iraq Obama let the matter drop. He could care less:
As U.S.-Iraq troop talks faltered, Obama didn't pick up the phone
He and vice-president Biden went nearly a year without contacting Iraqi prime minister, U.S. Embassy logs reveal
By Roy Gutman
McClatchy Newspapers
October 25, 2011

BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained aloof from the process, not even phoning top Iraqi officials to help reach a deal, according to logs released by the U.S. Embassy here.

The omission is an unusual one, given the high priority that U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline set in a 2008 pact between the two countries. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other senior Pentagon officials spoke often about the need for an agreement in a pivotal country in a volatile region and insisted talks were continuing up until Friday, when Obama announced that all U.S. troops would be coming home before the end of December.

A listing of direct conversations provided by the embassy — drawn, the embassy said, from the White House website — indicates that Obama had no direct contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki between Feb. 13, when he telephoned the prime minister, until Friday, when he called al-Maliki to tell him U.S. troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31.

Also absent for nearly the entire year was Biden. According to the official listing, Biden telephoned al-Maliki on Dec. 21, the day al-Maliki formed a new government, and visited here Jan. 18, but had no direct contact after that date, according to the official listing.
Years of immense effort at great cost in lives and treasure and now all that has been abandoned by Obama who doesn't seem to care whether those sacrifices are lost by his indifference. Keep that in mind when you vote for the next Commander in Chief a year from now!

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