Obama cut and run. Maliki should not have been gi

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Obama cut and run. Maliki should not have been given a choice if the US stayed..

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Really? Didn't' we claim that we overthrew Saddam so that Iraqis could have a chance at democracy? So how then could we thwart the will of the Iraqi parliament, who were insisting that American forces would be subject to Iraqi laws?

Yeah, that'd work. Arrests/'hostage taking and the usual 'free range' IED casualties/deaths.

I'm always amazed at how readily conservatives want to put at risk other peoples kids, for dubious causes. Really, Iraqis were worth continued loss of American lives by 2011?

And comparisons with garrisoning the ROK are silly. That was and is a homogenous, NON-SECTARIAN society, in no way similar to post-Saddam Iraq

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Condoleezza Rice, who served as Bush’s secretary of state, wrote in her 2011 book, “No Higher Honor,” that Bush did not want to set a deadline “in order to allow conditions on the ground to dictate our decisions.” She wrote that she met with Maliki in August 2008 and secured what she thought was an agreement for a residual force of 40,000 U.S. troops. But she said Maliki soon “reneged” and insisted on “the withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011.” She said Bush “swallowed hard” and agreed to what she called “suitable language” to do just that.


Rice, “No Higher Honor,” 2011: We’d given quite a lot of ground on issues such as a withdrawal timetable, consenting to the removal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011, and we even conceded a limited level of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over our troops. … Ultimately, the compromises we made proved beneficial because the resulting [Status of Forces Agreement] put the end of the war in sight and left the new U.S. president a firm foundation for a successful conclusion of our presence there.

So, President Bush reluctantly agreed to a withdrawal deadline without leaving behind a residual force because of Maliki’s strong objections. Jeb Bush ignores those facts.

Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s defense secretary from July 2011 to February 2013, wrote in his 2014 book, “Worthy Fights,” that as the deadline neared “it was clear to me — and many others — that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability” in Iraq. As a result, the Obama administration sought to keep 5,000 to 10,000 U.S. combat troops in Iraq, as Sullivan said in his statement.

But negotiations with Iraq broke down in October 2011 over the issue of whether U.S. troops would be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Panetta wrote that Maliki insisted that a new agreement providing immunity to U.S. forces “would have to be submitted to the Iraqi parliament for its approval,” which Panetta said “made reaching agreement very difficult.”

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