Republicans' revisionist history on Iraq

[kentuck]

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/244100-republicans-revisionist-history-on-iraq

<snip>
In the wake of former Gov. Jeb Bush's (R-Fla.) bungled responses to predictable questions about Iraq, Republican strategists are rolling out a specious new argument: In essence, that all was well in Iraq at the end of the George W. Bush administration, and President Obama messed it up. Charles Krauthammer calls it "the abandonment of 2011," blaming the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) recent advances on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011.

This argument flies so completely in the face of history and logic that it rivals the way Vice President Cheney intentionally misled Congress and the American public with false, exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Those misrepresentations led us into a war that 75 percent of the American public now says was not worth fighting. The hawks' new line is designed to get us back into it.

Let's start by remembering that the 2007 surge was intended as a temporary build-up to buy time, not as a prelude to permanent occupation. It was President George W. Bush who signed the security agreement with Iraq that set a date of Dec. 31, 2011 for all U.S. forces to withdraw from the country. And despite the U.S. success in holding up its side of the bargain — reducing levels of violence in order to create space for political progress — the Iraqi government remained unwilling or unable to do its part.

....more at link

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

1. These disgusting war criminal fucks will say or do anything to avoid responsibility

and to attack the black skin of the president.

[kentuck]

3. Because the average American has no historical memory...

...and the Republicans know that after a certain period of time has passed, they can spin it any way they want and never have to worry about the media calling them on their lies.

The premise of the "surge" was to pay the Sunnis a lot of American dollars not to kill American soldiers. Basically, it was a bribe. The al Qaeda in Ramadi, in the Anbar Province, agreed to not kill Americans so long as the money kept coming their way.

This was the strategy that was in effect when George W Bush left office. Barack Obama and Bob Gates kept the strategy in place until the American troops were withdrawn and the payments stopped. The Baghdad government, under Maliki, refused to permit American troops in Iraq unless they were subject to Iraqi law and he, also, stopped paying the Sunnis in Anbar province when the Americans left.

Contrary to what John McCain and others say about the success of the "surge", it was doomed to fail from the beginning. There was no way we could continue paying the bribes to the Sunnis and there was no way we could put American soldiers under the yoke of Iraqi law. Those are the facts.

[Cooley Hurd]

2. We invaded a sovereign country and deposed an entire political party...

...and are SHOCKED that they laid low for awhile and came back as ISIL?

[PowerToThePeople]

4. Fuck those pieces of shit

We need a revolution in this country. We are so far removed from anything decent in this society, I do not know how we can recover.