Twitter informs me that Obama is scheduled to announce a complete withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. What did we accomplish? What did we gain? Other than the removal of Saddam, nothing that I can tell, and I don’t understand how we are better off with Iraq in chaos and more closely aligned with Iran. Anyone who supported this debacle, as I did, should forever have their judgment questioned on everything. Even if you think they are right, remain suspect of their opinions. It’s just that simple. When I look at it now, it was such an easy call, such an easy test of critical thinking skills, and I and others failed it. It’s just that simple.
Which leads me to the most nauseating aspect of this announcement- all the people who were wrong will now be given airtime to do “victory laps” on national tv, complete with Liz Cheney and other dead-enders going on tv claiming this vindicates the previous administration. If I weren’t already bedridden with the flu, it would be enough to make me sick.
Trillions of dollars, untold tens of thousands dead, god knows how many wounded, millions scarred, and for what?
Now let’s GTFO of Afghanistan.
redshirt
Good for the Drone industry. And I’m sure Haliburton made out ok.
Litlebritdifrnt
Another promise kept. Not sure the baggers of either stripe will care though. I am sure John McCain will be on the Sunday shows telling everyone how this is somehow a “surrender”.
batgirl
Call me cynical but this has to be about reelection, and yet, for whatever reason the administration is doing this, thank FSM, it is about time already!
kindness
I’d say John’s acting like a reformed addict who got religion. But I agree with him. I don’t want to rain on this parade.
Now if we can only get the MSM to give Obama some credit.
Corner Stone
It was a good, but brief, speech. Mentioned OBL, Gaddafi, and an ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan.
Good stuff, all the way around.
Litlebritdifrnt
@batgirl:
From what I understand the Iraq government wanted 50K left behind as advisors but refused to grant them immunity from prosecution for anything. POTUS said “fuck that” and ordered the immediate withdrawal of all troops. Good on him.
schrodinger's cat
What about the scores or dead Iraqis that resulted from this misadventure? Or do they not count?
williamc
I still won’t feel vindicated for being right way back then. All those days and nights arguing with people and being called foolish for thinking that maybe we shouldn’t let dumb boy emperor play with our army in the desert for no reason.
I think for a lot of us anti-war types, it was an opportunity to see our friends and neighbors loose their minds and sanity still hasn’t found them again. If anything, the right and the centrists are even crazier now.
smintheus
@batgirl: Don’t think so. This is about Iraqis insisting that the US leave, and refusing to give either the Bush or Obama administrations any wiggle room to let them keep US forces in Iraq for the long term. It’s been clear for about 5 years that the Iraqi government was determined to push the US out as soon as possible, but few in the US wanted to admit publicly that our continued presence is extremely unwelcome.
schrodinger's cat
@Litlebritdifrnt: John McCain is an idiot, and a bitter one at that.
Mark S.
Always Wrong Cole is Always Wrong Again!
Nevgu, you can take the day off. I got this.
Corner Stone
@Litlebritdifrnt: IMO it’s the reverse. The US MIC wanted to keep scores of troops there after the deadline but the Iraqi’s said, sure – no immunity.
And we said, eh, see ya.
Hunter Gathers
We got our revenge for 9/11. Sure, Iraq had nothing to do with it, but if 100,000 brown people had to die in retaliation for a small group of Saudis committing a heinous act, then dead Iraqis are as good as anyone, I guess. Don’t forget the ass-ton of money transferred directly from the Treasury to ‘independent contractors’, better known as associates of Dick Cheney.
Can’t wait for President Mittens to pull off the same trick with Iran.
Zifnab
In 2003, Halliburton stock was $11 / share. In 2008, it was $40. People were making money hand-over-fist. We transferred trillions of dollars (that’s trillions with a “tr”) from the taxpayer to the military industry. And the money glut continues. We’re going to blow $900 billion on the military in 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG
Just consider the cost increase from 2001 until today. We’re looking at a doubling of the budget. Triple if you consider the interest we pay on our debt.
Someone clearly made out like bandits.
John Cole
@schrodinger’s cat: Read the post again. I didn’t differentiate between American and iraqi dead.
John Dillinger
Someone needs to ask the asshats during their victory lap if it wasn’t worth it just to wait, and have Saddam go down like Gaddafi.
dmsilev
Yes, yes, but Obama was reading from a teleprompter, so it doesn’t count.
(Disclaimer: I have no idea whether or not Obama was actually reading from a teleprompter.)
Corner Stone
I’m always happy to do my part.
Mark S.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
As sure as the sun will rise in the east.
smintheus
The question itself answers why so many of the war’s cheerleaders still cannot admit they were wrong.
HeartlandLiberal
I just copied your post to my two brothers in Alabama.
Better they hear it from you, than me.
Not that they will admit to being TOTALLY F*CKING WRONG on everything for the past 12 years.
That would be more than they can bear in regards to me, the oldest brother.
Thanks for putting it so well, though. I just wish my brothers had your guts for actually facing up to reality.
Quaker in a Basement
What makes you so sure about that?
Lydgate
Hey– can’t we just be happy about this news? Really, really happy.
MomSense
Do none of you cynics remember the Status of Forces Agreement?
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20081119_SOFA_FINAL_AGREED_TEXT.pdf
Article 24 section 1. clearly states that all US forces will withdraw by Dec 31, 2011.
I will add that it was pressure by candidate Obama that helped push the Bush administration into this agreement.
Linda Featheringill
@batgirl:
I think it is less about campaigning and more about how the people of Iraq want us to get the hell out of there.
schrodinger's cat
@John Cole: Sorry I didn’t make it clear, I was not criticizing you, just our FAIL parade MSM which goes on and on about American casualties but says next to nothing about what this misadventure cost the Iraqis.
Mark S.
I’m sure Slate has some contrarian piece about how it was all worth it.
schrodinger's cat
@Mark S.: Written by a physicist?
TenguPhule
Everyone who Supported the Iraq Shame should be given 2 choices. Publically repent, or be flogged 80 times with a cat of nine tails.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@kindness:
The Republican plan was to have a permanent military presence in Iraq like post WWII Europe, so elections do have consequences.
Mark S.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Why not? Everybody else is an idiot who doesn’t do REAL SCIENCE!1!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@schrodinger’s cat:
“No.”
— Fox “News”, conservative talk radio, the GOP, etc.
catclub
@Corner Stone: Course, the difference is that JCole is also questioning his own judgement. Are you questioning yours?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
You’re OK, John. It’s all the people who cannot remove the plank from their eye that I’ll keep questioning.
kindness
I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Didn’t like it but felt we had to. I never believed any connection between Saddam and Al Quada-9/11 so I didn’t support the invasion of Iraq. Seemed to me more an inside Oil game with domino principle sugar plums dancing in bush43/Cheney’s head. I remember being called a traitor.
Ah well, such is life. The foaming at the mouth right wingers would still say I’m a traitor. But I live a happy existence. They don’t. The joke is on me that I can’t stop them from foaming at the mouth. The joke is on them is that I continue to live and mock them.
Snarki, child of Loki
@williamc:
Well, sure; they’ve been assimilated into the Bircher worldview.
You know, the ones that still think “we should have stayed in Vietnam”. Presumably, to stop the horror of dominos falling from Saigon to Canberra. I do wonder how the Aussies are holding up under the lash of their Vietnamese Communist overlords.
Mark S.
Who wouldn’t want to have a bunch of foreign troops and military contractors running around their country? I think it would be peachy.
taylormattd
Ah memories. That piece from 2003 was written by long-time former kossack, sometimes frontpager RonK in Seattle. He quit Dkos because of how mean everyone was to Hillary, and because Obama was so inexperienced and black, he couldn’t win.
Lydgate
@TenguPhule: Well, the same goes for those that promoted Afghanistan as “the right war”. Such nonsense.
amk
cheney and his halliburton pals would love to answer that if you can make it to their mansions.
This is the single largest transfer of public’s money into a so few hands.
Plethded
The wingers on the internet have declared that this is liberal Obama cutting and running and tossing away victory. Try pointing out that Bush made the deal to leave, not Obama. They won’t listen.
cathyx
Wow, John, nicely done. I can’t believe you were ever a republican with that taking responsibility for your past actions.
Actually, the first presidential vote I made was when I was 18 and I voted for Reagan. I was young and dumb and under the influence of my parents at the time. So fortunately we finally wised up. There’s no going back now.
Andrew
Obama absolutely deserves credit here for a fairly orderly drawdown, but the context for this is actually pretty complicated. The Iraqis wanted the U.S. out and they forced the Status of Forces Agreement upon the U.S. towards the end of the Bush Administration.
Even within the Obama Administration, the Pentagon wanted a residual force there in order to protect U.S. interests and the Iraqi government. The WH permitted negotiations over a new agreement, but no agreement could be reached which could pass the Iraqi parliament. So we’re leaving, but it’s mostly because the Iraqis didn’t want us to stay any longer.
Again, Obama absolutely deserves credit for the prior drawdown and for not pushing harder on the Iraqi government to let us stay. But the reality is fairly complex.
slippy
Who gives a shit what they think about anything?
They were WRONG.
schrodinger's cat
@Mark S.: Well what can I say compared to a physicist, everybody else is an idiot
*ducks and hides*
theBuhjaysus
No worries John…
Bill Kristol and the Neocons are already banging the drum for war in Iran http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/speak-softly-and-fight-back_595936.html?nopager=1
If Obama loses re-election we have another war to look forward to.
Samara Morgan
wallah.
im gobsmacked into silence.
Corner Stone
@catclub: In what respect, Charlie?
TruthOrScare
Suggestion for JC and anyone else who cares to atone/participate: every time you see one of those ghoulish liars, torturers and war profiteers spewing their bile on the teevee, send whatever donation you can afford to the candidate or organization of your choice. Every time. A little positive karma to balance out the glorification of those assholes and their demonic agenda…
Librarian
I assume we’re leaving some troops behind, to defend the massive new embassy we built and the many bases we must have there, right? There’s no way we’ll ever totally withdraw from that country. So this announcement is partly bullshit.
Karl
Well it certainly motivated North Korea to finish weaponizing their nuclear program. Full employment for A Q Khan?
Catsy
@Samara Morgan:
In which case this is truly one of John’s finest accomplishments ever on this blog.
Roy G
In other news, the rooster takes credit for the sun rising.
As has already been mentioned, the Iraqi govt. declined to continue to give carte blanche to US troops, despite US arm twisting, so it wasn’t really Obama’s decision. Any praise for him on this issue is as deserved as his Nobel Peace Prize.
Corner Stone
@taylormattd: I hope you at least wear a condom when you grudgefuck old and insignificant long dead ghosts.
For their sakes.
lacp
@theBuhjaysus: What makes you think we don’t if he is re-elected?
Catsy
@Librarian: My understanding is that there will be somewhere around 150 personnel stationed as advisers, embassy guards, etc. Not even a full-strength company’s worth, and none of them engaged in combat operations of any sort.
And you know what? That’s good enough for me. We have more than that stationed in any number of peaceful countries. It’s still a shit posting, but it ain’t a war, let alone Korengal.
lacp
@Catsy: I think there are supposed to be about 5K security contractors, too.
ChrisNYC
The idea that the Iraqi government, which is facing an internal rebellion and Iran and Syria on its borders and has little confidence from its own people, is FOUR SQUARE against US forces in the country doesn’t make sense.
The whole fight has been the Maliki govt arguing that they can’t keep things together without the US BUT they want US soldiers to be basically a security bulwark if things really get hot and with only certain narrow rights of self defense in the interim.
theBuhjaysus
@lacp:
::shudder::
I don’t see an invasion of Iran under Obama, but hey what do I know.
theBuhjaysus
@lacp:
::shudder::
I don’t see an invasion of Iran under Obama, but hey what do I know.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Doing the right thing only because your continuing unaccountable American Exceptionalism is thwarted by one of your victims? Priceless. More of this, please, also too and thank you.
.
.
Corner Stone
@theBuhjaysus:
I don’t believe so either, but you have to scratch your head a bit on the recent “assassination plot” rhetoric BS. Why ratchet garbage like that up to this level? Who is the WH trying to squeeze?
ChrisNYC
@Andrew: The Maliki government were the ones arguing for an agreement that *bypassed* the Parliament. Because of the political fallout. Understandable.
LTMidnight
@Librarian: No, no troops. At all. Zero.
All U.S. presence completely gone from the country.
Nutella
@Litlebritdifrnt:
No, good on the Iraq government for refusing immunity and insisting on the rule of law.
And smaller kudos to Obama for dealing with the inevitable in a sensible way.
amk
@Roy G: firebaggers – fdl that way.
Rome Again
@williamc:
I completely agree. I don’t think it will ever be acceptable to many Americans to discuss the absence of WMD without creating some controversy. Many people still don’t want to believe it. Holding onto the fantasy is more important than truth, apparently.
harlana
“judgmentally impaired” you may be, but you’re certainly right about that one!
LTMidnight
@Roy G: TRANSLATION: “You can be damn sure if we continued our presence in Iraq, I’d be blaming Obama from hell to high water. But since emolib who is never satisfied, I’ll join with right wingers by refusing to give him any credit for keeping a promise”.
You guys are so fucking transparent. And you wonder why people don’t take you seriously.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Roy G: Ignoring the fact that Bush/McCain would have made up some “We have to be here to protect them from Iran” type BS, and your idiocy over the peace prize, I totally agree.
EconWatcher
I think you understate the extent of the damage to America.
We started by insulting some of our closest and oldest allies because they were smart enough not to join in this fiasco. Then we conducted a demonstration over several years, for all the world to see, of breathtaking arrogance, incompetence, and disdain for international law.
We were going to enter a period of gradual decline in power and influence anyway. But this probably sped the process up by about a quarter of a century.
And of course, we topped that off by tanking the world economy with boatloads of fraudulent securities from our unregulated netherworld.
I’ll stop now. My blood pressure is rising.
amk
@Andrew:
teh reality
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Lydgate: So, because Iraq was wrong, everything was wrong? Were you a former Republican?
Uplift
Thanks for being so willing to admit that, John. It’s candor and humility like this that makes me interested in reading what you write, even if I don’t always agree.
Catsy
@Corner Stone: Somewhat OT, but a truly interesting phenomenon I’ve been noticing more and more is a sense of history on the Internet–it is actually becoming possible for stuff to be old. When I first started getting online in the late 80’s/early 90’s, the only real history on the Internet consisted of the usual geek tales of 300 baud modems, Ataris and Amigas, Usenet threads, and personal sites or projects of those few people who were around When It All Began.
Now? It’s been more than a decade since we started seeing dot-com ads in Super Bowl commercials, and if I dig hard enough I can find things I posted or coded almost twenty years ago. To the vast majority of the people on the Internet, All Your Base was before their time and LOLCats have always been a fact of life.
I know, this kind of rumination means I’m getting old. But the Internet is somewhat like a nation of its own that was founded only 30 years ago, except that changes take place on a much faster time scale–and it’s fascinating to think about things that were written less than a decade ago and realize that in the hyper-accelerated cultural life cycle of the Internet, they may as well be ancient history.
El Cid
@batgirl:
Well, that’s a main reason for having elections in the first place. So good for it.
El Cid
Hey, look on the bright side — it wasn’t 3 or more million people like US policymakers killed in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
gaz
@williamc: basically agreed, here. I appreciate John getting out in front of this, and I wish that the people that weren’t/aren’t doing the same to be called out. Unfortunately that will take a functioning 4th estate.. I continue to suggest we:
#occupyfox
#occupymsnbc
#occupyge
#occupynewscorp
#occupynpr
#occupycnn
(in no particular order)
this shit has to stop. I suspect that even Mr. Cole may not have come to the initial conclusion he did, were large swaths of our 4th estate not corrupt beyond conscience.
At what point will the media begin to *weigh the credibility* of people that say crazy shit? At what point do they begin to ask followups? etc..
i say lets occupy. also, as a side I wish we would also rename the Dept of Defense back to the Dept of War and let the optics help work things out over the next decade, wrt to the MIC that is)
=)
MonkeyBoy
The problem with military spending is that it is a major proper-upper of the US economy.
Sure, morally, US defense spending should at least be cut in half. But that would throw a bad economy into utter chaos.
Arclite
Yeah, but now Saddam won’t be able to attack us with all his WMDs and nukes that he had stockpiled. Also, the Iraq invasion caused the Arab Spring. And the war brought the economy out of recession.
Oh, wait…
ABL
nicely done, cole.
Corner Stone
@LTMidnight:
I thought this was snark at first.
We will have a significant diplomatic presence in country, and a small troop contingent.
Not to mention several thousand contractors.
Suffern ACE
Not even a toe print. Thank you Iraqis for holding our craven leaders to that agreement when you knew they wanted some form of extension.
soonergrunt
@Catsy: Have a drink on me for that.
batgirl
@El Cid: Yes, you are right. Elections are about holding the people we elect accountable.
Though, as many on this thread have pointed out to me, the complete withdrawal, more or less, is more a result of the Iraqis finally kicking us out.
Biff Longbotham
Thanks John for the (re re re re)link to that most excellent post from the days of yore. I’ll tell you what this whole endeavour has accomplised–a) We now have a new batch of war brides (following in the steps of their Italian, French, German, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese sisters) to introduce to the American dream. Ain’t war grand?
Tony J
@ChrisNYC:
ISTR that Iraq’s Parliament has been overtly opposed to US troops remaining in the country for quite a few years. The story is a bit hazy now, but I’m sure I remember reading that back in 2007 the Parliament actually refused to vote in favour of a pro-forma ‘request for assistance’ to the UN that made the presence of US troops there legal.
Obviously they were ignored by all the serious people, who knew that the US was going nowhere while Bush and Cheney were still in the White House. Looks like the election of an actual grown-up changed that paradigm, and now this is how things have shaken out.
MikeJ
@Corner Stone:
The embassy guards won’t be in Iraq. They’ll be in US territory, surrounded by Iraq.
schrodinger's cat
@MonkeyBoy: You know that it was World War II (the massive govt. spending program that it was) got us out of the recession. So I am just waiting for someone to say lets start a massive war effort to get out of the current jam.
Rome Again
@Plethded:
If they want to believe Obama ordered this, perhaps you should send them dated sources from August 2008 stating Bush ordered this withdrawal, such as this one.
Rome Again
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m sure McCain is licking his chops, thinking he can solve the problem with a war in Iran as we speak!
handy
@El Cid:
Democracy. Ur doing it right.
Roger Moore
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Except in this case the election that mattered was the one in Iraq. We were able to keep our troops in Europe because the European countries were willing to accept our presence there to help ensure their security. The Iraqis don’t accept our long-term presence, so they’ve refused to give us the same kind of agreement. Even the Republicans couldn’t have kept our bases there without overthrowing the Iraqi government they had spent so much time and effort building.
Corner Stone
@MikeJ: This is the level of pedantry I would’ve expected from a J. Michael Neal, or a lesser burnspbesq.
Kudos to you, kudos.
Davis X. Machina
Five, six years of respite from the scourge of gay marriage. And a slightly lower top marginal rate of income tax.
Surely that’s enough…
The World’s Most Expensive Campaign Commercial comes to an end….
Bill H.
@batgirl:
Not really, it’s a foreign policy defeat for him. This was negotiated by Bush before he left office and Obama has been trying to get an extension to keep troops there after the deadline. He is announcing the he has failed to do so.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
IOW, a big war is the only stimulus the right wing will agree to fund.
Davis X. Machina
I expect oil prices to soar, since this development clearly means Iraq no longer has any.
Jay C
@Tony J:
Yes, and for a nontrivial segment of this country’s foreign-policy Establishment (thankfully, the segment OUT of power – for now) this is a major bug, not a feature. And, of course, will be a major grievance to be aired ad nauseam by our lame Media. Who are probably already booking John Bolton and Liz Cheney for the Sunday gas-fests: so they can excoriate President Obama for “Throwing Away Our Victory” or whatever sick counterfactual BS the neocon party-line calls for.
lamh34
saw some military dude on CNN, and I know what the new meme will be for neo-cons. Dude said this is a good thing for “individual soldiers” who get to come home from Iraq, but it’s a “stategic mistake”.
I expect to hear this everywhere the neo-cons dwell. ya heard it here first.
harlana
of course, all of this could have been avoided if anyone had listened to me or my scant compatriots back in the day, but oh no, we hated Amurka!
(spit)
Bill E Pilgrim
One of the most tragic occurrences in US history. I sat here and heard that Bush was going to invade Iraq and said out loud “Oh no, oh no, oh no…” Being far away I guess I wasn’t up on the day to day debate, at least not that part, so I really didn’t know until then that these monsters would go through with it. My landlady at the time was Iraqi and over the next days and weeks I heard about her brother and his family trapped in the north and she had no idea whether they were okay or not because all communication was cut off.
The thing that still amazes me is how Republicans and frankly most Americans just seemed clueless about how there were actually real, living, people in the country, not just targets in a video game. I’d see some upstanding citizen on the street being interviewed calmly saying “Well, I think we just have to go in there, and…”, and just thought, “We?” Who the hell are you people? What if an Iraqi said that about your country? That calmly, that matter of fact, as if they had every right and it were some sort of sanitizing operation?
And many thousands of them died, and many more thousands fled, and then for almost a decade there was civil war and nothing functioned as it used to, lives totally wrecked.
And for what?
brantl
There were one million dead in Iraq, several years ago, during the Kerry V Bush campaign period. Tens of thousands, what shit.
catclub
@Bill H.: Any foreign policy defeat where you get to announce that troops are coming home before the holidays, you take. Kind of the opposite of a Pyrrhic victory.
ericblair
@MikeJ:
Well, not quite. Land for diplomatic missions doesn’t belong to the represented country; it’s the host country’s land but subject to the Vienna Convention. When the US Embassy in Ottawa up and moved to its new, massive, ugly grey sinister looking digs across the Canal, the Canadian government got the job of unloading the old primo real estate and has managed to fuck it up completely. Anyway.
kc
I love a man who can admit he was wrong.
Trakker
Better yet, remain suspect of everyone’s opinions.
I have never met anyone in my life that has been right all the time. Question everyone, and everything. Even this comment… heh!
Svensker
@Samara Morgan:
Well, there’s something good, anyway.
Tony J
@Jay C:
Yup. Down the memory hole with everything inconvenient and up with the revisionist CW that Obama has unilaterally surrendered everything that Bush ‘won’.
I expect this to be a major meme next year. The MSM won’t be willing or able to help themselves polishing any turd that boosts Republican prospects.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, it is a bit dated, and the author has since died, but here you go. Added side benefit of bringing us back together as a country again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102907404.html
Svensker
@Bill E Pilgrim:
They weren’t Americans or Israelis. No one else counts as fully human.
rikryah
can’t wait to see the GOP bitch about why the troops should stay
Admiral_Komack
@Roy G:
Go to FDL, where Saint Jane Of The Ratfuck can give you a lap dance.
schrodinger's cat
@Bill H.: Of course,everything is Obama’s Katrina, even the good news.
Martin
Well, we can’t afford Medicaid and SCHIP due to the debt load incurred by the war, so I’d say the war against the poor and minorities was a success for the GOP.
Martin
C’mon media. We can’t stay into 2012 because the Iraqi government refuses to let us stay. The GOP says Obama is a failure for not insisting we stay. The GOP, even guys like Romney, and demanding that Obama re-invade Iraq, effectively declaring the Iraqi government an enemy of the U.S.
Pretty please, could you point that conclusion out to them and ask why they think the Iraqi government deserves to be overthrown? You fucked us so badly on the first Iraqi war, please make amends here.
General Stuck
Thanks Obama, for keeping this campaign promise, like so many others. Meanwhile, we should all be working to turn neocon piss and vinegar into fuel to make our cars go, lest Pandora’s Box brings new surprises from that bloodied sand box.
soonergrunt
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/10/ap-libya-nato-jim-stavridis-wants-end-to-ops-102111/
fuzz
You sound like you’re wearing a tin foil hat when you say it, but the Iraq war was always, at its core, a personal fight between Bush and Saddam. Bush was trying to finish the job his dad started and make himself look tough in the process. Saddam tried to kill Bush Sr at some point in the 90s and that was the real reason for the war (IMO).
There’s a reason it seemed like there was no plan from April 03 till about the spring of 07, because there was none. All they cared about was getting Saddam, and they did, everything that came afterwards was secondary. It was only when it got so bad that Bush absolutely had to make a decision, and he did, oddly enough going against the advice of generals and sending more soldiers in.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Oh, that’s just president Obama leading from behind, some more. It was Lindsay Graham and John Mccain who blazed the way to victory from Fox News Sunday bloody bill pulpit.
And unless we forgets. It was
And the moonlight splattered like bloody shadows of death beyond Mohamar’s ample, but ugly face. John Mccain swooned at his fortune for an evening’s prospect of SewerRat love.
PS – Johnny Maverick. I don’t think they have “ranches” in Libya, afaIk.
OzoneR
@batgirl:
Ultimately, is that the point of democracy? Do thinks that make people happy in order to win reelection?
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
You do realize that every US embassy in the world has guards, even ones in nice friendly countries like Great Britain, right?
O noes, we’re going to have office workers working at the embassy in Iraq just like every other embassy! We’re not really leaving! Obama lied!
Roger Moore
@soonergrunt:
[Emphasis mine] Welcome to the future, bitches.
Linnaeus
Regardless of who really should get the credit for this withdrawal, I’ll take it. It’s about time.
As for this:
I wouldn’t go that far. People make mistakes. In fact, I would argue that the notion that being wrong on one thing means that you’re likely wrong on everything else is a big reason why people are reluctant to admit when they’re wrong in the first place.
Quaker in a Basement
Sovereignty means it’s….it’s sovereign. It has sovereignty.
Trurl
Not that Obama wanted this. But once the Iraqis withstood all our pressure to sign a blank check for future civilian massacres, he had no choice but to pull back the troops to our new billion dollar embassy and re-christen them “diplomatic security personnel” – including no shortage of Blackwater-style mercenaies. (Who presumably can play the diplomatic get-out-of-jail-free card a la Raymond Davis if they ever get trigger happy.)
As a bonus, his party bootlickers will be happy to try selling it as “pulled all the troops out”. It’s easy to fool people who want to be fooled.
General Stuck
@Trurl:
Might I say. You sound bitter. And stupid.
Corner Stone
@fuzz:
It was a big grift. Nothing more than that. The biggest grift in modern times.
Until 2008.
Corner Stone
@Linnaeus:
There’s making a mistake like ordering the wrong cheese on your burger, and then there’s making a mistake like cheerleading the fucking Iraq War.
People who made that mistake should never, ever, be given the benefit.
Lysana
@Trurl:
Don’t you have an eight-lane freeway to go play on?
General Stuck
And if the POTUS had been determined to keep “a few thousand” troops in Iraq, they would have stayed, and with immunity from Iraqi laws. Face save for both sides, if for no other reason it would have been pol poison for a dem president/candidate for reelection to keep any sizable US combat troop presence in Iraq after he promised not to.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck:
Based on what?
General Stuck
You mean like Hillary (cough) Clinton?
Trurl
I’ve seen you do better than this. Try harder.
You’re not even using your one perfectly legitimate argument for keeping thousands of US gunmen (some in our uniform, some in the uniform of our for-profit subcontractors) in Iraq forever.
Which is that our warcrimes against Iraq, which ended or destroyed the lives of literally millions of people, have made us such a loathed presence in the Arab world that we need to take major security precautions just to safeguard our embassy from being slaughtered in revenge.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I don’t think it was just one thing. Defense contractors, mercenaries, and their enablers saw it as the big grift. Unhappy leftovers from Bush I saw it as a chance to fix the mistake of not taking out Saddam in 1991. Oil companies saw it as the next big deal. Neocons saw it as a chance to prove how tough we were and a place for permanent Middle East bases. Republican operatives saw it as a way of putting Democrats over a barrel. Reporters saw it as a big story and a chance to prove their chops as war reporters. The reason it had so much momentum is because it had something for everybody.
Linnaeus
@Corner Stone:
Sure, some mistakes are more serious than others. But I’d say John’s contrition on this issue is in fact evidence of sound judgement in the face of better arguments and evidence; he could have doubled down, but didn’t.
eemom
@General Stuck:
easy there General. Yer gonna ruin Stonie’s whole weekend.
You know how he gets when people diss his mamma-crush.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
based on my opinion and the fact that Obama isn’t stupid. And the fact you are an Obama hating asswipe from the beginning, and are in fact stupid, and should never be listened to, and in fact, should have been permanently banned a long time ago for being cancer on this blog, not mention humanity itself.
I can forgive Cole for his honest mea culpa on his support of the Iraq invasion, but not so much for not doing the right thing and sending your rancid ass to the nethers of the ethers for ever and a day. I trust that answers your question.
General Stuck
@Trurl:
Well yea, but why should I for a malignant troll thang like you.
General Stuck
@eemom:
Stonie don’t surf
Cris (without an H)
It allowed us to move our permanent bases out of Saudi Arabia.
soonergrunt
@Trurl: I think you should go there, and personally ask forgiveness.
Right now.
Jenny
Wait a minute… the internets keep telling me it’s an endless war!?
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
IOW, The Big Grift.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck:
So, based on jackshit then, as per the hoosh.
Thanks President Stuck.
Jenny
@taylormattd:
Not only that, he became completely crazed, becoming a PUMA and voting for McCain, who specifically campaigned on leaving the troops in Iraq forever.
Sadly, he wasn’t the only one.
DFH no.6
@fuzz:
I disagree on the overall motive.
I believe – and I’m pretty sure the inimitable Davis X. Machina believes this as well – that the Iraq War was primarily a Republican electoral stratagem, particularly for the re-election of “war president” Bush in 2004 (along with as many Republicans on his coattails that year as possible).
That’s what the war was for. Mission Fucking Accomplished, by the way.
Other things were important, sure, but secondary (including the neo-con PNAC bullshit, “taking out” Saddam, and the incredibly lucrative transfer of wealth from our treasury to the many contractors of various stripes who profited so enormously from the war).
I don’t think “W finishing what his daddy didn’t” factored into it at all.
And the reason we went in when we did in spring 2003 without an occupation plan was because we were forced to move by the fact that the inspectors were finding fuck-all in the search for WMD, and if that had gone on much longer it would have totally given the lie to our bullshit cassus belli. So in we went, we’ll figure out the rest as it goes.
And fuck all you assholes who won’t give credit to Obama for this total withdrawal. It’s fucking 2011 – who gives a shit what Bush “decided” in 2008. He’s not president anymore.
Do you really think President McCain would be doing this?
And do you really think we’re leaving because the Iraqis are making us?
You believe that, you’re an idiot.
Corner Stone
@Linnaeus:
Eh, I see Cole get so many things wrong from jump that I don’t lend much credence to his backtracking on this issue.
He literally bullheads his way through the incipient stages of any issue, and has to be talked down repeatedly.
His judgment isn’t any better, just his ability to say he was wrong in a shorter timeframe after the event.
lettucefactory
I live in Northern Virginia, right inside the Beltway.
While I personally have not gained anything from this (I work for state goverment), my neighbors largely work for defense contractors, and they have gained heaps of gold. A modest rambler on my street is worth at least half a million. The place is filled with Audis. The kids go to expensive summer camps in the mountains and the parents vacation in the tropics. While the rest of the U.S. bleeds, Northern Virginia never really had a recession.
I’ve got a contractor-acquaintence only a few years out of college and employers are fighting for her. In the mid six figures. She has an active security clearance and an engineering degree, so she could basically sit at her desk and drool all day and take home more financial security than you’ll ever dream of. She is on Facebook and google chat all. damn. day. Every day. And naturally, she can’t get enough of snapping at the OWS crowd because they didn’t make the same enlightened choices she did and moaning about her taxes. Northern Virginia mints people like this by the hundreds.
This is what Iraq accomplished. The Asshole-Industrial Complex is alive and well and thriving while everyone else suffers.
Corner Stone
I just have unrequited love for Hills (and thank goodness after seeing what she did to Vince). Is it wrong to think she’s fucking sexy?
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Hillaaaaaaaaaaaaaary
And no you moron, it wasn’t based on nothing. I clearly stated based on the fact that it would have been pol suicide, or at least harmful to his reelection, to piss off the dem base, the real one, by keeping combat troops in Iraq after the deadline. No one really knows what went down between Obama and Malaki except for them, but whatever else they both are, they are politicians with the instinct for political survival, at least.
Now let’s hear your hypocrite ass slam the blog owner for his Iraq War support, but not your sweetheart, Hillary, that you supported for presidente, though as we all know, that is a lie and you voted for Mccain and Palin. Where at least Cole has admitted his error, right out in the open on his popular blog. Hillary, not so much as a peep of her vote being a mistake.
You really are a loathsome piece of shit. You know that?
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Bottom line is you have no idea what happened, yet you stuck your dick in the mashed taters and said if Obama wanted to fuck Maliki he would have done so, except for the case where he thought maybe he didn’t want to, but that one time he did want to.
Then we know voters vote how they choose, in some cases they don’t do that, NCIS and Dylan Ratigan. There’s marble round the fireplace mantle but swiss watches tell us something else completely. And things mean things to some people, except when they mean meatloaf to football teams. Purple and crayons and paper ghosts hanging in the hall. Raybans.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Is this all you got, pedantic wanking on those who state opinions on politics on a political blog? Weak shit, even for your sorry self. I offered an opinion and with the circumstantial pol evidence to base it on.
And while you are at it. Do the right thing and apologize to the blog host for you being a moronic hypocrite we know you are for supporting an Iraq war voting senator for president, but not for a blogger who has long since faced his errors in judgment. You can’t, though you should, if you were anything like an honest human being. But instead of being a small petulant shit heel trolling the blog for someone to slam for their imperfections, with hopes it will make you hate yourself a little less. And it is no accident, the slamming by corner stone, being the most imperfect, some might say, train wreck of a retched soul on BJ, that should be giving his heart to jeevus, cause his ass belongs to sewer.
theBuhjaysus
@lettucefactory:
This.
This is the type of scenerio that infuriates me to no end.
theBuhjaysus
@lettucefactory:
This.
This is the type of scenerio that infuriates me to no end.
theBuhjaysus
sorry about the double post
It’s that these contractor’s are the true parasites, but instead Chris Christie will bully some teacher on youtube and the winger cheer.
theBuhjaysus
sorry about the double post
It’s that these contractor’s are the true parasites, but instead Chris Christie will bully some teacher on youtube and the wingers cheer.
General Stuck
@theBuhjaysus:
No need to apologize. That was just Word Press saying it likes you.
Samara Morgan
@Librarian: no, we have to turn over the three largest airbases ever built on foreign soil to the Iraqis.
there will be contractors and CIA there, but NO IMMUNITY.
does the name Raymond Davis strike a bell?
Samara Morgan
@Corner Stone: dude, O had no choice.
the Iraqis are holding to the SOFA and they dont want another one.
you do not understand how detested the US is in Iraq.
they are going to form the New Shiia Crescent with Iran and Syria.
game over.
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: We’ve long known things, except for those times when we didn’t, or didn’t think we knew them. And those times caused 400 degrees Celsius, but for the places we didn’t use glassware. The use of TV trays, for some, told us all we needed for mountains. And the white paint chips nutrition with crown molding did things for some. Snow falling and cherry blossoms remind me of that movie where people did things, but I think they were just acting. Not like that other place and time we should all be able to agree on, but some BBQ’s won’t let us.
Corner Stone
@Samara Morgan: Why are you addressing this to me? It is President Stuck’s assertion that if Obama had chosen to stay in Iraq then he would have negotiated an extension.
Based on absolutely nothing.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Corner Stone:
Based on the simple fact that we have bigger guns.
eemom
@lettucefactory:
I’m in NoVa too (Vienna), and fucking McMansion-dwellers are knocking over modest homes and building look-how-rich-I-am monstrosities left and right. We’ve been wondering where the money was coming from.
chrome agnomen
@MonkeyBoy:
reallocate the money to domestic infrastructure projects, and put the forces right to work on them.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
I turned you into a babbling fool, but didn’t mean to. Swear to gawd. Task Farce Ranger drools the range.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
The situation is far more complicated than that, especially wrt Syria.
Turkey started off supporting Assad, but is then became very critical. It is leaning towards the Sunni camp much more now; so you are beginning to see a “Sunni crescent” emerging: with Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia supporting the Sunni uprising against Assad and the Alawites.
Turkey’s situation is complex with a growing “Kurdish Spring” of her own. She is currently waging an offensive against the Kurds in Nth Iraq. Turkey and Iran are allies in opposing the Kurds but are opposed intensely over Syria. There is a lot more that could be said about Turkey and Kurdistan.
Egypt’s economy looks problematic, to put it mildly.
Poyani
At least you admit to it. That’s good. Most of the slime who supported this war are curiously silent about all their initial claims.
Mnemosyne
@Trurl:
You know someone has crossed the ODS Event Horizon when their first thought at hearing the news that we’re finally leaving Iraq is “Obama FAIL!”
DFH no.6
@Mnemosyne:
Absolutely.
With all the comments here, very much including my own deathless prose, right now the single most important thing that can be said about the goddamn Iraq War is the title of John’s post.
Over.
Anticlimactic, I suppose, and way, way too long in coming, but finally, it’s just fucking great to say it.
Over.
And yes, I know for the Iraqi people it isn’t truly over and won’t be for a long time.
But we won’t be there anymore creating more problems than we solve.
Now let’s get the fuck out of Afghanistan so the same will be true there.
Corner Stone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
That would mean this president cares not a bit for the rule of law.
Is that what you’re saying?
Corner Stone
@General Stuck: Monitors and red lights sometimes use drones for things, except when they do not. And in those times we need DVORAK to tell us other things we used to know, but do not anymore. Herpa derpa shamaloo a dinger ring.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Shorter Corner Stone – I got less than nothin’ so I will talk crazy. Figures
p mac
It wasn’t that cut and dried: to find a reliable source reporting on the probable lack of WMD you had to pay pretty close attention. I likely wouldn’t have tumbled to it if I hadn’t happened to hear an NPR interview with Scott Ritter.
He was talking about getting sent all over the place in Iraq by US “intelligence leads”, and found nothing but a steam pile of bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@p mac: I have to disagree. I was very aware that UN inspectors were there and were not finding anything. You wouldn’t find much about it in US media, but the information was pretty readily accessible.
mclaren
Actually, the most nauseating part of the whole thing will come when the Republicans claim that the Iraq invasion would have gone perfectly if only the traitorous subversive Democrats hadn’t sabotaged our sacred troops at every turn.
The old “stabbed in the back by those America-hating liberals” myth.
Wait for it…
Rome Again
@fuzz:
I always called it the “‘He tried to kill my Daddy’ war”.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Jeez, dude. Why are you even bothering to reply to that crank? Everyone here recognizes General Crackpot Fake Name has nothing to offer to any discussion on this forum other than to accuse people who criticize Obama of having “butt rabies.” Whatever that is.
The entire 2003 Iraq invasion seems best regarded as yet another outbreak of mass insanity in America. We’ve been subject to these periodic outbreaks of mass insanity every few years. Remember the Palmer Red Scare? No? How about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon? Or the UFO craze of the late 1940s? The Seattle windshield-pitting epidemic of 1954? Then there’s the Cuban missile crisis, in which an American president thought it would be a wonderful idea to stick short-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, and the Soviet premier thought it would be an even better to stick a bunch of SLBMs in Cuba, and the planet nearly got vaporized in a thermonuclear firestorm.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is so insane, so incomprehensible, so bizarrely outrangeous, that in a recent movie (X MEN FIRST CLASS) the only way the characters can explain the behaviour of American and Soviet officials in 1962 is “mind control by mutants.”
Then, of course, we have the great grandaddy of all outbreaks of mass insanity: Vietnam.
During the 80s, we got the Satanic child molestation panic. Despite 20,000 reports investigated by the FBI, not one single proven case of satanic cult child molestation ever turned up.
Then we got the dot-com bubble, then the housing bubble…
Really, America is a giant drooling mental-ward patient. America has its lucid moments…but they’re few and far between. For most of the last century, as far as I can tell, the United Snakes of America has been engaged in one out-of-control crazed hole-up-in-the-house-and-take-potshots-at-everyone-in-the-neighborhood bout of mass insanity after another.
I find myself wondering what the next bout of mass insanity will be. Witch-burning? Killing everyone whose front yard has garden gnomes? Maybe all Americans will suddenly go bserserk and run around chewing garden hoses and licking doorknobs. Or maybe we’ll start screaming at giant invisible bats attacking us from the sky, like the narrator in the car in FEAR AND LOATHING OF LAS VEGAS.
This country isn’t a nation, it’s the largest insane asylum in the civilized world.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
Always nice to get a personal shout out from the blog lunatic. Thanks.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Because it’s the work of a lunatic to point out that the president of the United States must obey the law.
As I said…one bout of mass insanity after another. The Salem Witch Trials…Japanese-American internment during WW II…Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1939…the June Bug epidemic of 1962.
General Crackpot Fake Name just provides us with another example of the phenomenon.
wilfred
The 2008 SOFA mandated US withdrawl from Iraq by 31 December 2011. Obama had nothing to do with it. In fact, he and the last diehards were trying like mad to keep 3,000 soldiers there past the deadline but the Iraqis refused to allow it unless said troops were subject to Iraqi law, i.e. they would not be granted immunity. Obama refused and the 2008 SOFA held true.
I’ve done my penance for believing what was said about this war. Never again. They’re now drumming up a war against Iran, led by Obama and Clinton.
Same shit, different mouths.
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred: Bullshit.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you have anything to add other than profanities? “Former CIA analysts think Iranian assassination story is made up.”
Or take a look at Chuck Spinney’s assessment (Spinney remains one of our most respected and knowledgeabout national security analysts).
Fact upon fact, all rendering this alleged Iranian “plot” absurdly unlikely. As the Nigerian yellowcake fairytales and the supposed mobile chemical laboratory vans alleged to brew sarin in Saddam’s Iraq, nothing about this story makes sense.
Why would Iran recruit someone like Manssor Arbabsiar, with no relevant skills or experience, not known to them, known to be at best marginally competent?
Why would Iran use the telephone lines to communicate vital details of the plot from Iran to America when they surely must know that those lines are closely monitored?
Why would Iran use the US bank wire transfer system to move money from Iran, especially after 9/11, when all such wire transfers are meticulously scrutinized?
I’m hearing profanities from our friend Omnes Omnibus, but no facts and no logic. Meanwhile, all the available facts and evidence support Wilfred’s claim that the Iran assassination fairytale is just another Iraq-WMD story designed to gin up U.S. support for yet another American war of aggression.
Oh, and by the way…I predicted another war. You’ll recall I’ve said repeatedly that America is now engaged in Forever War. When we pull our troops out of Iraq, we’ll invade some other country. America is now at war forever, never-ending invasions, never-ending conflicts, battlefields everywhere in the world, forever. The invasions by American troops will always increase, never reduce. Our attacks on other countries will ramp up with ever-increasing ferocity. America is hopelessly addicted to war and after 9/11, the total militarization of American society means that war is now the health of the American state. The president and congress no longer control the budget of the United States, the Pentagon does. Only such pittance of small change as is left over from our endless unwinnable wars will the Pentagon generals permit to be used on social services and infrastructure.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: It is the height of stupidity to even entertain the thought the Iranian Govt had anything to do with this “plot”.
We’ve been engaged in a low intensity hot war with Iran for some number of years now. And they have all the advantage in their sphere of influence. Why would any faction, no matter how rogue, engage this buffoon to transfer a hundred fucking thousand dollars through the modern banking system? Because they want the US to fly bombing runs overtly into Iran? To destabilize a structure they hope to benefit from?
This may be the stupidest garbage I have read since the trio tried to melt an NYC bridge with blow torches.
To take the word of the DoJ on this issue is sheer insanity.
Buffoonery.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Detective Ed Norris said it best in episode 1 of season 5 of The Wire:
“Americans are a stupid people, by and large. We pretty much believe whatever we’re told.” — Det. Ed Norris, The Wire, season 5
John
So the Obama administration did everything it could to void the agreed-upon 12/31/2011 deadline and keep American troops in Iraq, and was balked solely by Iraq’s refusal to give them immunity–and some of you actually think Obama should get credit for that?
There’s truly no limit to what some people will rationalize away so long as it’s a Democrat doing it; just sad counterparts to the right-wingers who rationalize whatever a Republican does.
John
“The United States will still keep about 160 military personnel to guard its embassy in Baghdad and manage the continuing military relationship. There will also be 4,000 to 5,000 private State Department security contractors, as well as a significant C.I.A. presence.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/president-obama-announces-end-of-war-in-iraq.html
Samara Morgan
@Corner Stone: the Iranians are claiming the US sponsored MEK orchestrated it.
My point to you is the old ways are failing.
Obama is just trying to slow/stave-off NLS collapse.
He would have liked to keep some troops because our Saudi allies are demanding it, or they say they will raise a standing army to counter Iranian influence. 9 years later the Sauds still dont recognize the Maliki government.
its all games theory.
the Iraqis said NO. it would topple malikis government to give American troops immunity.
l’affaire Raymond Davis coupled with droning Pak provinces almost toppled Zardari’s government.
the environment has changed.
After the Arab Spring, the American Fall.
Samara Morgan
@John: will any of them have diplomatic immunity?
l’affaire Raymond Davis almost toppled Zardaris government.
i dont think Sadr is going to let Maliki make the same mistake.
Samara Morgan
@Samara Morgan: or maybe he will.
:)
the Islamic Republic of
IranIraq, anyone?THE
@Samara Morgan:
Who cares? The Persian Gulf is increasingly China’s problem now.