Dick and George’s Excellent Adventure in Mesopotamia is not working out so well.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Not according to would-be-Potus McCain who said today:
Once again with emphasis:
Will this old, incompetent fool live long enough to regale all the kiddies born in 2030 with the story of how McCain won the Vietnam War behind enemy lines with his bare arms and a broken leg?
What do Cheney and his evil spawn have to say about the recent turn of events? Let’s get the whole Iraq cheerleading team out there to remind everyone how f’d up their foreign policy chops are. Obama can’t do anything right so they say. Their wack a mole nightmare has returned.
They’re moving into position to trash Obama’s war. GWB/Cheney won it and then Obama lost it. By 2016 they’ll be reminding everyone that Obama inherited a booming economy and he trashed it.
Yes, I’m sure that’s what’s coming. But it will have no credibility. People listen to what the Cheneys say in the same way that they gawk at a car wreck. The more that the R’s start singing from that songbook, the more Americans will remember why they turned hard against them in 2006.
Historical memory, even among those that were there, is not a strength of Americans. It’s a reason why USians can’t understand peoples and nations that remember the past.
ActivistGuy cuts to the chase:
Then there’s tone deaf Ms. Clinton forewarning someone:
uh huh
uh huh
people better recognize
I’m really worried about what this will do to Halliburton’s bottom line.
○ Reuters: Ukraine accuses Russia of allowing tanks across border
and
○ Russia sends 24 warships, bombers to Baltic drills as NATO stages war games
US Army Europe
War games for a new battlefield. The antidote to the malaise of the loser old battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, …
Have so many questions. Did any in the House or Senate request an Iraq briefing during the last 6 months? Or were they all to busy yelling Benghazi. How many men are in this Iraq invasion force…500, 5000, more? Who is the money behind this invasion force…or is this just the Saudis continuing their 8 century war against the Shia?
We so need to walk away. We have spent, what 3-4 trillion and we must be approaching a million lives on Bush’s war.
Booman Tribune ~ Dune
Deja vu, all over again…
I don’t know how to say this in how many different words, but here it is…
and folks better wake up.
………….
Hillary Clinton Would Consider Keeping U.S. Forces in Afghanistan After 2016
by Evan McMurry | 12:41 pm, June 12th, 2014
At an event at the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday, presumptive 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she would consider keeping residual U.S. forces in Afghanistan following President Barack Obama’s final 2016 withdrawal date.
“I would,” Clinton said. “It depends upon conditions on the ground.”
Clinton said that if the next-elected president of Afghanistan “were to come up with a well thought-through plan of what is needed, I believe that would be very seriously considered.”
Clinton’s comments come just two weeks after Obama announced the total drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but as the situation in Iraq deteriorates absent the presence of residual American military personnel.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary-clinton-would-consider-keeping-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan-afte
r-2016/
Democrats don’t want to know what a President Clinton would do. They only want to win in 2016. Then come February 2017 will act all surprised that US troops will remain in Afghanistan for another decade, and by March 2017 will tell the peaceniks to STFU and stop being so unrealistic and idealistic.
More for Democrats to ignore — on NPR:
BFF with Kissinger — and she brags about it!
Does Obama have President Ford’s playbook for evacuating an embassy under attack? A pity of Saddam’s palaces and the fortified U.S. Embassy which will get some redecorating done when ISIS sweeps through.
To be clear, ISIS has been strengthened through weapon shipments into northern Syria via Turkey for US allied opposition fighters against Assad. The Kurds have battled the jihadists and kept them out of their territory. The region where ISIS roamed in Syria was scarcely populated in the cities along the Euphrates river, see Raqqa and the cleansing of Deir ez-Zour.
Maliki wasted the good relationship U.S. forces maintained with tribal leaders in the Sunni triangle of Anbar province. The Sunni areas have been run over by ISIS with help of local tribal leaders. I understood ISIS had been succesful through awakening of ‘sleeper cells’ in these major cities. It has been a slow proces of months … Maliki’s parliamentary election represented a hollow victory because the Sunni population refused to take part.
○ Reports: The dynamics of Iraqi forces and resistance in Anbar province
○ Perhaps You Have Noticed … A turning Point In Syria May 26. 2013
So many unlearned lessons from the Vietnam War, but to compare North Vietnamese forces to ISIS is an insult to the Vietnamese that had been actively fighting against colonialists for thirty-five years at the time of the fall of Saigon and during all those years had the hearts and minds of a majority of the people with them.
There was just one question wrt to Vietnam. One nation as the people want today or tomorrow? And if the US chooses tomorrow, how much is the US willing to pay to delay the inevitable? Appreciating that before 2003 is where any analysis of invading and occupying Iraq broke down. There was no preexisting and acceptable institutional power in Iraq, and therefore, “quagmire” was predictable but outcomes unpredictable other than almost guaranteed to be dreadful. Cambodia redux is what was being entertained. Although, without significant oilfields, the US could just walk away and pretend that the killing fields had nothing to do with us.
Also check out Charles Pierce today for what Ford’s private game plan was. And there have been pictures of that old SOB Kissinger in the Obama WH.
You misread my post. In no way did I intend to compare the fighters. Baghdad is divided into Sunni and Shia neighborhoods, therefore the U.S. Embassy can easily come under attack. Be ready to evacuate …
○ Iraq Kurds seize Kirkuk; Sunni militants surge toward Baghdad
Sorry if I misunderstood. Read it recommending that Obama use Ford’s evacuation playbook. Not a good idea as Ford’s evacuation plan failed as the order came too late. Unless Plan B was the use of helicopters to and from the embassy roof. Although that never looked as if it had been planned and doesn’t seem as if that has been claimed. However the US Saigon Embassy was cheesy compared to the massive, billion dollar, heavily secured US compound in Baghdad. OTOH, no structure/complex doesn’t have weak spots.
Yes, indeed, Prez McStooge keeps his perfect record intact, bravo! “Will be difficult turn it around” indeed, especially by the US if McFool is thinkin’ Iraq II.
Looks like another job for Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. What the hell kind of army dissolves before a thousand jihadi militiamen? One trained and equipped by us for almost a decade, I guess.
We best stay out of these “training” games. Talk about pouring billions down a rat hole. And after dissolving Saddam’s (at least cohesive) army, no less.
Expect Cheney to be yapping on the FoxBox pretty soon..