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Panetta unloads on White House for pulling US forces out of Iraq

I was referring to president Clinton. But to play along, at one time eighty percent or better of Americans supported the Iraq war, but in the course of time, they'd like to put that genie back into the bottle.
I doubt that as Bill Clinton was no longer in power and speaking after the fact, just when many other Democrats turned their coats. You can't see the politics in his responses???
 
Really! He never bombed Baghdad? At any rate, he thinks the premature invasion was a mistake and that the weapons inspectors should have been allowed to finish their job, and being there were no WMD's, they would have concluded such and the impetus for war would have been non existent.
He is a Democrat first and always. Of course he is going to say that!!

You were referring to Hillary and now come up with a silly 60 minutes interview. Why not just stop.
 
So much for the Obama Foreign Policy narrative.

You know, " Don't do stupid s***"

I mean think about it. Past Presidents actually worked FOR Middle east peace.

Obama ? Nope.

He decided to play Politics with one of the most unstable regions in the world.
 
That is clearly wrong now and was clearly wrong at the time.

Maliki was was a fool and is saying this as bombs dropped around him. Did Obama really take this guys words that Iraq would remain secure?? Who is more naive? Obama or Maliki?

Well, if it was wrong at the time, then I suppose that in six years time, the Bush administration failed to properly train the Iraqi army/security forces. But Malaki said they were prepared as I showed you.

I doubt either one of them are naive. They're politicians! Remember how that works.
 
He is a Democrat first and always. Of course he is going to say that!!

You were referring to Hillary and now come up with a silly 60 minutes interview. Why not just stop.

The same criticism can be made of all politicians, republican and democrat alike. There is no source of Hillary criticizing the Iraq war, I was quoting president Clinton and provided a link as such. If you don't like that, you know what to do.
 
I wonder what Obama has in store in terms of payback for Panetta ?
 
I wonder what Obama has in store in terms of payback for Panetta ?

Obama and Panetta are all good. This is classic politics, Obama's lame duck, he can't be hurt, Hillary needs help distancing herself from Obama like the 2008 GOP. Candidates had to distance themselves from Bush. It's all bull hockey dude.
 
Malaki didn't need residuals.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday he believed Iraqi forces would be ready by June 2007 to take full control of security in Iraq, an issue on which he pressed President Bush during their meeting in Amman, Jordan.

In making the argument that his military and police could handle security in the country, al-Maliki has routinely said the force could do the job within six months.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," al-Maliki said in an interview with ABC News.
You make my point by posting.
 
How's that? AQI was formed by al Zarqawi in Iraq in 2004!

From your own post:

"ISIL originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999. This group was the forerunner of Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn—commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)—a group formed by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in 2004. AQI took part in the Iraqi insurgency against American-led forces and their Iraqi allies following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the 2003–11 Iraq War, it joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council, which consolidated further into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) shortly afterwards."
 
Really! He never bombed Baghdad? At any rate, he thinks the premature invasion was a mistake and that the weapons inspectors should have been allowed to finish their job, and being there were no WMD's, they would have concluded such and the impetus for war would have been non existent.

President Clinton's views on the Iraq invasion are no more important to this discussion than those of any randomly selected DP poster.
 
Really! He never bombed Baghdad? At any rate, he thinks the premature invasion was a mistake and that the weapons inspectors should have been allowed to finish their job, and being there were no WMD's, they would have concluded such and the impetus for war would have been non existent.

But WMD's were found but the left had already politicized the war in Iraq and what WMD's that were found, they said they don't count.

http://www.un.org/depts/unmovic/new/documents/technical_documents/s-2006-701-munitions.pdf

How familiar are you with the former high security (secret) military installation on Johnston Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean ? It's where hundreds of tons of fifty and sixty years old mustard gas was incinerated. Well beyond the shelf life that non chemical warfare civilians claim. =The U.S. military considered the mustard gas to be still lethal after more than fifty years in storage that it had to be transported to Johnston Atoll to be disposed of.

Secret Bases - Johnston Atoll

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity (CMA) - Johnston Island

2011 OAC | Sample Sites | Johnston Atoll | Open Architecture Network
 
Obama and Panetta are all good. This is classic politics, Obama's lame duck, he can't be hurt, Hillary needs help distancing herself from Obama like the 2008 GOP. Candidates had to distance themselves from Bush. It's all bull hockey dude.


Obama DID say we were voting for or against his Policies.

Yea I know, probably not a good thing to say.

Hillary ? She had enough of Obama bad mojo rubbed off on her to make her Presidential run in 2016 a waste of time.

Obama made a critical foreign policy decision based on Political reasons alone. Thanks to Panneta we now know that.

Even after being warned.

Instead of doing something Presidential, like basing his decision on the welfare and safety of the Iraq and American people, he saw a chance to earn a little Political capital by perpetuating one of his election narratives.

He played politics with one of the most unstable regions in the world.

LOL ! Who the hell does stuff like that ?

Hillary went right along with him when he did the same thing in Benghazi.


Perpetuating some manufactured narrative of a American embassy in Lybia was far more important than the safety and security of the people stationed there.

He needed a Foreign Policy talking point for the 2012 elections.

I think most voters will remember Hillarys lies and her complicity in that cluster in 2016
 
The same criticism can be made of all politicians, republican and democrat alike. There is no source of Hillary criticizing the Iraq war, I was quoting president Clinton and provided a link as such. If you don't like that, you know what to do.

He was merely before it before he was against it - a fine and longstanding Democrat tradition :)
 
The same criticism can be made of all politicians, republican and democrat alike. There is no source of Hillary criticizing the Iraq war, I was quoting president Clinton and provided a link as such. If you don't like that, you know what to do.
Did you know that all those Democrats who were for the war, the Clintons included, were later against the war? Did you even read your link? You still have no idea what's going on except to parrot that everything is America's fault.
 
I wonder what Obama has in store in terms of payback for Panetta ?

I doubt he can do anything now. Panetta is not just repeating what was said in his book he is now elaborating on it.

Panetta is finally doing the right thing but what about all the other Democrats who knew what was going on at the time and just stayed silent? Saying their behavior was treasonous may be over-dramatic but that's the word that first comes to mind.
 
Leon Panetta had now better watch his back now for turning on the Dear Leader, I could see the IRS looking into his affairs. I could see the NSA looking for dirt on Panetta for the Obamanite media to use against him. I could also see the militant Eric "Himmler" Holder looking for something on him as well. This government operates a lot like the mob, you cross them & they will get you.
 
There was a broad sunni-shia-kurd center coalition building after the elections before the ones we just had. We put Joe Biden in charge of sheperding it, and apparently he managed to dick it up bad enough that the other two groups walked, and Maliki was left with no one to build a majority with but the Sadrists. Iraq had the most federal system of any Arab State.

Iraq never had any experiences with democracy, Saddam Hussein kept the country together by brute force. As soon as he was gone the Kurds more or less became independent. Paul Bremer made things worse by removing the Sunnis from power and Maliki kept only Shiites and his cronies as part of his government, thats why many Sunnis joined ISIS. Iraq can have all the democratic laws it wants but the fact is its a failed state and it isnt working because each faction doesnt want it to work.
 
Did you know that all those Democrats who were for the war, the Clintons included, were later against the war? Did you even read your link? You still have no idea what's going on except to parrot that everything is America's fault.

There's a fair share of republicans that would like to put that genie back in the bottle too. And I forgot, everything's Obama's fault.
 
According to Panetta the US had the needed leverage to renegotiate the a SOFA agreement with the Iraqi's.

The White House even coordinated the negotiations.

But Obama wanted out period.

So I'm trying to figure out if his motives were purely Political or if he was just frustrated and wanted nothing more to do with Iraq.

Granted, neither one of those reasons justify what he did



It's pretty simple when examined through a political filter. The Nobel Laureate president wanted to portray an image of peacemaker in the middle east, he apologized, led a 'limited war' in Libya and was planning on running on a platform of "I killed Osama, l-Qaeda is on the run, and "I got our troops out of Iraq".

The date was arbitrary as Obama wanted those troops home in time for the election and even said "they will be able to have Thanksgiving with their families".

He wanted out, no matter what, even rejected a token 10,000 man force to stay behind and help co-ordinate the Iraqi military.

I have yet to see any decision from this White House that was NOT based purely on political positioning, usually after the **** up.
 
It's pretty simple when examined through a political filter. The Nobel Laureate president wanted to portray an image of peacemaker in the middle east, he apologized, led a 'limited war' in Libya and was planning on running on a platform of "I killed Osama, l-Qaeda is on the run, and "I got our troops out of Iraq".

The date was arbitrary as Obama wanted those troops home in time for the election and even said "they will be able to have Thanksgiving with their families".

He wanted out, no matter what, even rejected a token 10,000 man force to stay behind and help co-ordinate the Iraqi military.

I have yet to see any decision from this White House that was NOT based purely on political positioning, usually after the **** up.



Exactly

Seems. Like he would have learned his lesson by now.

He chose to play Politics with one of the most unstable regions in the world and it backfired.
 
Exactly

Seems. Like he would have learned his lesson by now.

He chose to play Politics with one of the most unstable regions in the world and it backfired.



That's typical and consistent with how I read this guy. He is so far out of his league he doesn't even realize what a powder keg he was dealing with in the first place./ He has taken his strategy from where he has gotten all his advice, cloying academics who have never seen any more than text book accounts. He fashioned together the most complex health care plan in the universe and still maintains it's 'good', he has underestimated every foreign encounter from arming rebels in Syria to thinking Vlad Putin was a push over like some Republican Senator he can bully. It simply never occurred to this arrogant fool that Putin has tanks and missiles too and would and did use them.
He wanked out of Iraq to meet a personal agenda and now has a cancer eating away at his entire foreign policy and yet he still insists his was is the only way, ignoring his own defense staff.

That is one very dangerous president.
 
Iraq never had any experiences with democracy, Saddam Hussein kept the country together by brute force. As soon as he was gone the Kurds more or less became independent. Paul Bremer made things worse by removing the Sunnis from power and Maliki kept only Shiites and his cronies as part of his government, thats why many Sunnis joined ISIS. Iraq can have all the democratic laws it wants but the fact is its a failed state and it isnt working because each faction doesnt want it to work.

That is a pretty one-sided description of what occured. In fact there was a broad coaltion including Sunni and Kurds forming under the initial Maliki Government, but we (read: the Presidents' action officer, read: Joe Biden) dicked it up, collapsed it, and Maliki had no option but to ally with the Sadrists to make a majority. Then we yanked out early, leaving that element without a curb.

The idea that Arab Culture cannot adapt to representative government today is no more legitimate than the claim that Confucian Culture could not do so half a century ago.
 
There's a fair share of republicans that would like to put that genie back in the bottle too. And I forgot, everything's Obama's fault.
The buck stops elsewhere? Where would that be? You may forget a great many things but one thing you should remember is that the Fundraiser-in Chief has been making seriously bad decisions for six years now, to the point where many are asking just whose side this guy is on.
 
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