Printable View
^ Well that doesn't have anything to do with my post. The neocons had no clue about the difference between a Shia and a Sunni so if you are trying to somehow insinuate by posting that little picture that those greedy bastards were trying to engage in some righteous holy war you are sorely mistaken.
They did it for money.
Bob Woodward: Bush Didn’t Lie About Iraq & Obama Blew It (VIDEO)
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif
Investigative reporter and author Bob Woodward delivered an honest assessment of the War in Iraq today on FOX News Sunday. Bush did not lie and Barack Obama blew it.
"You can make a persuasive argument there was a mistake. But there is a kinda line going on that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. Lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet the CIA director, don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD. He was the one who was skeptical.
If you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, ‘Hey, look, it will only take a week or two.’ Early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months, so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lie in this that I could find…
… Look, Obama does not like war. But, if you look back on this the argument from military was keep ten-fifteen thousand troops there as an insurance policy. And we all know insurance policies make sense. We have thirty thousand troops or more in South Korea sixty-five years after the war. When you’re a super power you have to buy these insurance policies and he didn’t in this case. I don’t think you can say everything is because of that decision but clearly a factor."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP6yPjMprK8
Full Biography
If you can't believe Bob Woodward, you can you believe, eh?
I am just wondering, how can you have an invasion plan without an exit strategy. Didn't anyone in the Whitehouse staff, ask that question? Or, for that matter, anyone in the coalition?
U.S. Has No Exit Strategy for Iraq, Rumsfeld Says (Update1)
By Caroline Alexander - April 12, 2005 07:21 EDT
April 12 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has no exit strategy or timetable for withdrawing its forces from Iraq and a pull-out depends on the readiness of the Iraqi Security Forces, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
``We don't have an exit strategy, we have a victory strategy,'' Rumsfeld told soldiers during a surprise visit to Baghdad, according to a pooled broadcast report from the capital. ``The goal is to help the Iraqi Forces develop the skills and the capacity to provide their own security.''
The defense secretary arrived in Iraq today to meet with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani, Captain Darren Luke, a U.S. military spokesman, said by telephone from Baghdad. He'll press the two, who were both elected by National Assembly members last week, to continue moves toward democracy, the Associated Press reported.
The U.S. currently has 150,000 soldiers in Iraq, the strongest foreign contingent there followed by the U.K., South Korea and Italy. Poland, which has 1,700 troops in Iraq, today announced it would recall its forces by year's end, Polish TVN24 television reported.
The presence of coalition soldiers in the nation of 26 million people is contested by some Iraqis, tens of thousands of whom took to the streets of Baghdad on April 9 calling for U.S. troops to leave immediately. The Iraqi government wants U.S. forces to stay until they have quashed the insurgency which began after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi Police
The Iraqi Police and Army has about 152,000 members, according to Iraq's interim government. Progress is being made in their training, Rumsfeld said today, without indicating how long it would take for them to become fully ``competent.''
``We have to see the institutional capacity developed so that they can take over the security responsibility,'' Rumsfeld said referring to Iraqi Security Forces. ``As that takes place, the responsibility of the coalition forces will decline and they will be able to move away and leave.''
The Defense Secretary, whose visit wasn't disclosed until his arrival for security reasons, praised the U.S. soldiers he addressed in Baghdad and told them that they'll earn their place in history for fighting ``a war where victory depends not only on military successes but on reconstruction and civil affairs.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at [email protected]
Obama's exit plan was to simply bail which he did instead of: "keep ten-fifteen thousand troops there as an insurance policy. And we all know insurance policies make sense. We have thirty thousand troops or more in South Korea sixty-five years after the war. When you’re a super power you have to buy these insurance policies and he didn’t in this case."Quote:
Originally Posted by rickschoppers
Dumbshit...:yup:
We have no exit strategy for the battle against ISIS. Sound familiar?
Top General Says 'There's No Exit Strategy' For War Against ISIS
Posted: 03/26/2015 4:16 pm EDT Updated: 03/26/2015 4:59 pm EDT
Alan Grayson On ISIS Exit Strategy05:37
WASHINGTON -- Retired Gen. John Allen, the U.S. government's point person for the international fight against the Islamic State, publicly admitted on Thursday what most Americans have long suspected about the United States' newest military conflict. Eight months after the initial bombing campaign began in Iraq, Allen told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that there is no exit plan for what increasingly seems to be an intractable conflict.
During a Thursday morning hearing, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) asked Allen, who in September was appointed as the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, to describe the exit strategy for an eventual conclusion to the war.
Allen responded, “The exit strategy is an Iraq that is territorially secure, sovereign."
"An ISIL that has been denied safe haven, ultimately has been disrupted to the point where it has no capacity to threaten at an existential level the government of Iraq and the nation of the Iraqi people -- and ultimately ends up in a state that does not permit it to threaten the United States or our homeland,” the general said, using the Obama administration’s preferred name for the Islamic State.
“General Allen, that doesn’t sound like a strategy to me, that sounds like a wish list,” Grayson countered.
The discussion continued back and forth.
“There’s no exit strategy for this. This is about dealing with Daesh. This is about defeating Daesh. The success of the strategy is not about exit,” Allen eventually said, using the acronym for the Arabic name for the Islamic State.
To lawmakers like Grayson, the lack of an exit strategy suggests that the conflict is bound to devolve into an ongoing quagmire, in troubling echoes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It disturbs me, it’s beyond problematic,” Grayson told The Huffington Post after the hearing. “It’s clear that once we get in, once we get entrenched in the manner that the General is describing, we will literally never get out."
"We’ll see the same kind of forever war forecast in 1984," he added. "It’s Orwellian.”
Allen’s admission comes two days after President Barack Obama announced that 9,800 American troops would remain in Afghanistan through at least the rest of 2015, even though he declared in December 2014 that America's longest war was officially over.
While Grayson and other Democrats fear another open-ended U.S. military commitment, Republicans criticize Obama for being too hesitant in responding to threats abroad.
"The world is starving for American leadership, but America has an anti-war president,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters in a press conference Thursday morning. “If America leads, our allies in the region would be tickled to death and would be happy to join the [anti-Islamic State] coalition. But America has to lead."
The debate over whether the military campaign is too open-ended or too limited has become the main obstacle to the administration's effort to get Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force specifically tailored to this conflict.
The Obama administration claims that the AUMF passed in 2001 in response to the 9/11 terror attacks also applies to the war against the Islamic State. However, aware of the questionable optics of relying on a 14-year old piece of legislation passed for a different conflict, Obama asked Congress in February to vote on a new war authorization, drafted by the administration.
Since then, there have been multiple hearings and briefings on the legislation, but a vote does not appear imminent. Asked on Thursday about a possible timeline for a vote, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said, "Thus far, this bipartisan examination has included a number of hearings and briefings, including today’s hearing and a committee meeting last week with the intelligence community. The committee is planning to hear from the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense about the proposal in April."
"After this committee review," he said, "we’ll look at next steps.”
Most Democrats, like Grayson, are concerned that the administration's proposed AUMF contains no geographic limits, vague restrictions on ground troops and an unclear definition of who can be targeted. They also note that the measure leaves the expansive 2001 AUMF untouched.
On the other side of the aisle, a majority of Republicans want to remove any language that restricts ground troops and are resistant to a sunset provision, which would require Congress to reauthorize the war after three years.
"The bad thing about the authorization to use military force -- the request that came from the president -- is the president is asking us to give him less authority than he has today under prior authorization,” Boehner said on Thursday.
The Department of Defense estimates that the daily cost of the campaign against the Islamic State is approximately $8.5 million, or $3.1 billion a year. As a way of sidestepping the spending caps imposed in 2011 under sequestration, House Republicans' budget for fiscal year 2016 puts $96 billion in a separate part of the budget, called Overseas Contingency Operations, which funds overseas conflicts and is not subject to the caps. The proposal provides $38 billion more than what the Obama administration originally requested for OCO.
The budget passed in the House on Wednesday and is expected to go to a vote in the Senate late Thursday night.
Laura Barron-Lopez contributed reporting.
Before we can have an exit strategy you have to have a strategy going in to win and Oba-'meh' cannot recognize it's a war rather than a 'police-action'.
Blinded by his ideology...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rickschoppers
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boon Mee
Yes, you are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boon Mee
^B.S.
Obama's been in denial for the last 6 years we're not in a war. Calls ISIS the Junior Varsity! :yerman:
Are you blind or simply delusional? I'll highlight the relevant sectionsQuote:
Originally Posted by Boon Mee
Your one-eyed hatred of Obama is making you look the foolQuote:
Originally Posted by rickschoppers
Heh...your unwavering support for this failed community agitator makes you look really 'Naa Wit Taa Naa' - pathetic.Quote:
Originally Posted by OckerRocker
Give us Obama's exist strategy when you have a minute. There's a good lad. :)
Basically what this asshole is saying is that America needs to elect a Republican so they can start another war. That is the most troubling paragraph in the article to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by rickschoppers
You still can't differentiate a statement by Rumsfeld in 2005 from Obama? I've highlighted it twice for youQuote:
Originally Posted by Boon MeeHeh...your unwavering support for this failed community agitator makes you look really 'Naa Wit Taa Naa' - pathetic.Quote:
Originally Posted by OckerRocker
Give us Obama's exist strategy when you have a minute. There's a good lad. :)
Don't worry the Military have a solution to the lack of success. It seems the "bombers" that the coalition are deploying don't know where to drop their bombs. Many are returning from alleged raids without dropping a solitary bomb.
This is causing friction in the debriefing rooms as the pilots were promised little brown kids to blow up.
What is envisaged is a few JTACS. Iraqi JATACs just can't hack it, they have obviously not learnt anything at JATAC school for the last 8 years. A few JATACs, with US blood in them, will be forced to put their boots on the ground.
it appears that JATACs are the soldiers who hide behind sand dunes, illuminate the target with those red laser pointers and the bombers computer drops the bombs. Without the laser guide the pilots just can't hit the target it seems.
from a reputable news company::confused:
Obama Under Pressure to Send U.S. Target Spotters to Iraqi Front - Bloomberg Business
Islamic State’s seizure of Ramadi has revived a debate in the Obama administration about whether to send a limited number of U.S. military specialists to Iraqi battlefields to target airstrikes on the extremists...
Conducting precision airstrikes that avoid civilian casualties is more difficult without spotters using laser designators and other tools to guide them, particularly in and around cities, said a State Department official who spoke under ground rules requiring anonymity.
A U.S. airstrike in November against a different extremist group in Syria killed two children and wounded two adults, the Defense Department reported Thursday…
While the issue of spotters has been raised before, no recommendation to deploy the specialists known as joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, has reached the president, according to the official.
On Capitol Hill Thursday, retired General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, said deploying JTACs, also called forward air controllers, could quickly shift the balance against Islamic State by making its fighters more vulnerable to U.S. and coalition air attacks…
“Seventy-five percent of the sorties we are currently running with our attack aircraft come back without dropping bombs, mostly because they cannot acquire the target or cannot properly identify the target,” he said. “Forward air controllers fix that problem.”
Meanwhile from another "reputable" news company a map showing the regions of the world where ISIS has plans to dominate/utilise it's pledged, in country experts.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/923.jpg
It looks like the USA will need a bigger budget, to be funded by the US taxpayer, to build a bigger, better US JTAC school.
Not quite sure what you are on about.Quote:
Originally Posted by OckerRocker
It is going to be tough to defeat ISIS if this keeps happening.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32867220
Iraqi forces lack will to fight - Ashton Carter
8 hours ago
From the section Middle East
Media caption
Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Mr Carter could have been "fed with the wrong information"
Islamic State
Islamic State: How it is run
Fears of Shia muscle in Iraq's Sunni heartland
What is Islamic State?
Iraq: Growth of the Shia militia
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has said the rout of Iraqi forces at the city of Ramadi showed they lacked the will to fight against Islamic State.
Mr Carter told CNN's State of the Union the Iraqis "vastly outnumbered" the IS forces but chose to withdraw.
The head of Iraq's defence and security committee said the comments were "unrealistic and baseless".
The Iraqi government has now deployed Shia militias to the area to try to halt the advance of IS.
On Saturday, the militiamen retook Husayba, east of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, with heavy fighting continuing in the area on Sunday.
'Very concerning'
The US has invested in a policy of training and arming the Iraqi forces since it withdrew its combat troops at the end of 2011.
But Iraqi forces have suffered a number of defeats at the hands of IS over the past year, leaving behind US-supplied materiel.
Ashton Carter, file
Ashton Carter: "We can give them training - we obviously can't give them the will to fight"
Map
Mr Carter said of Ramadi: "What apparently happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force."
Describing the situation as "very concerning", he added: "We can give them training, we can give them equipment - we obviously can't give them the will to fight."
Mr Carter said the supply of training and equipment would continue, in the hope it would develop such a will.
The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan in Washington says the comments are a stinging assessment of the army the US has been training and will embolden critics who say the only way to defeat IS is to put American boots on the ground - something Washington has so far ruled out.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the BBC's John Simpson he was "surprised" at the comments.
"[Mr Carter] was very supportive of Iraq and I am sure he was fed with the wrong information," he said.
Mr Abadi also insisted Ramadi could be taken back "in days".
Hakim al-Zamili, the head of Iraq's parliamentary defence and security committee, was more critical of Mr Carter.
Iraqi Shia fighters west of Baghdad, 19 May
Iraqi Shia fighters have been deployed to combat IS west of Baghdad
Civilian refugees from Ramadi, 22 May
Thousands of civilians have fled the fighting in Ramadi
Mr Zamili told Associated Press the US had failed to provide "good equipment, weapons and aerial support" at Ramadi and was seeking to "throw the blame on somebody else".
Mr Carter defended the US policy of carrying out air strikes in support of Iraqi ground forces and said the ultimate defeat of IS would depend on the Iraqi people.
He said: "We can participate in the defeat of IS. But we can't make Iraq... a decent place for people to live. We can't sustain the victory, only the Iraqis can do that. And, in particular in this case, the Sunni tribes to the west."
Media caption
Who's in charge of IS? In 90 secs
Anbar province, which is predominantly Sunni, covers a vast stretch of the country west from Baghdad to the Syrian border, and contains key roads that link Iraq to both Syria and Jordan.
The fall of Ramadi, just 110km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, was seen as a major embarrassment for the government. Thousands of civilians fled.
The US believes the Iraqis left behind tanks, artillery pieces, armoured personnel carriers and Humvees.
The deployment of the Shia militiamen to the Sunni province has sparked sectarian fears.
In addition to Ramadi, this week IS militants also seized the last Syrian government-controlled border crossing with Iraq and, in Syria itself, the ancient city of Palmyra.
Some observers said IS now controls 50% of Syria's entire territory - as well as a third of Iraq.
Syrian state media said on Sunday that IS had killed at least 400 people, including women and children, in Palmyra since taking it over, but this has not been independently confirmed.
Powell did. Sorta. George, listen up.Quote:
Originally Posted by rickschoppers
"If you break it, you own it.
“You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.”
Recall though HRC and a whole slew of Democrats voted for the war so there's that...Quote:
Originally Posted by Norton
^ Based on the lies given to them by the neocons who fabricated evidence.
Sure I recall. Was a team effort by a bunch of misguided ignorant lawyers.
Simple strategy for the US. Let the ME 7th century armies fight each other. Stay out and if there get out.
81% Of Al Jazeera Arabic Poll Respondents Support ISIS
Isn't that just lovely!
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/965.jpg
In a recent survey conducted by AlJazeera.net, the website for the Al Jazeera Arabic television channel, respondents overwhelmingly support the Islamic State terrorist group, with 81% voting “YES” on whether they approved of ISIS’s conquests in the region.
SHOCK POLL: 81% Of Al Jazeera Arabic Poll Respondents Support Islamic State - Breitbart
^ Useless snide remarks aside, booner, why do you think people feel feel that way? We fucked up so badly that people feel safer with murderous psychopaths than with us. It's nothing to brag about or laugh about. We have let everybody down. All mouth and no trousers. We should be ashamed, how many millions have died because of our lies? How many millions more will die because of our cowardice and our lies? The shame will last for generations. We left the world a worse place than we found it, we let everybody diwn.
The famous (or infamous - your choice) quote by Ms. Ann is most appropriate at this junction:Quote:
Originally Posted by DrB0b
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/972.jpg
Multiculturalism doesn't work my friend...:yup:
You should have added 'vapid memes . . . and try to address the question'.Quote:
Originally Posted by DrB0b
Fallujah beforeQuote:
Originally Posted by DrB0b
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/975.jpg
And after
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/976.jpg
Yes indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Norton
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/05/978.jpg