POTUS Did NOT Defend The Iraq War

[DirkGently]

20. Yeah. No. What he said was wrong.

- We DID go in to grab their resources. Check Cheney's pre-war divvying up the oil fields for energy companies

- We left the country an ungovernable shambles, still on fire and wracked by destruction

- We absolutely did NOT abide by international standards of anything. We kidnapped, tortured, and murdered people without charge or proof of wrongdoing -- and that's according to US.

Obama did not cause the Iraq war. Obama did not vote for the Iraq war. But he tried to defend the indefensible, and in so doing muddled the facts and rationalized and dissembled.

Did he have any choice? Maybe not. Every time, forever, that the U.S. tries to tell another country it is selfishly and inexcusably using force on another country under a transparently fake rationale, there will be Iraq. Not our first crime of that sort, but it's the one we will never be permitted to forget.

This is another reason we should have prosecuted the war criminals. If we'd ever planned on being taken seriously as any kind of moral arbiter of responsible international citizenship, that is what we had to do. We didn't. HE didn't.

Of course, if he apologized unreservedly, Republicans would pillory him for being "weak."

But "context" doesn't help anyone here. Iraq is a flaming pile of bad that America created, and its shame cannot be swept aside or excused or explained or talked around. We are a non-entity in the world of self-righteous international conduct, and there is nothing Obama can do about it, but that doesn't mean his attempts to do so succeeded, either.

It is what it is. An inexcusable, inexhaustible reason to call America a hypocrite any time it tries to judge another country for horrific aggression in the name of freedom.

Not his fault. But not within his power to repair, either.