How do you grade Obama with respect to Iraq?

If you look at the debates four years ago during the primaries - the Iraq War dominated much of the questioning.

Looking back now on the steps President Obama has taken with respect to that issue, do you feel that he handled it well?

Is Iraq even going to come up in this round of debates?

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, this one is for you. Let’s spend the money at home, not throwing more of it down the Iraq money pit.

You just can’t put a price on security—until now. While the town I live in has had to close its library one day a week to save money, and shut down part of the police department, the State Department plans to spend $10 billion on guards for our Embassy and Consulates in Iraq. Some 74% of Embassy Baghdad’s operating costs go to security.

Danger Room reports that a company named SOC will guard the Embassy facilities, while long-time merc group Triple Canopy will provide protection when personnel need to scurry outside the Embassy fortress. The overall goal is for State to have its own Army of some 5500 contracted mercs, almost two full brigades worth of hired guns. Deflowered old war horse Blackwater, under yet another dummy corporation name, will also get a piece of the money pie. Yeah, Blackwater, that’s worked out well for the State Department in the past. Having seen these contractors in action in Iraq myself, they are what our military would look like without NCOs, a frat house with guns.

Congresswoman, better call those State contracting officials back up to the Hill.

Triple Canopy is the company that now guards the Embassy, using almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians hired out of their own countries and brought to Iraq. They get paid about $600 a month, while their US supervisors pull down $20,000 of your tax dollars every month. Many of the Ugandan and Peruvian guards got their jobs through nasty middlemen (i.e., “pimps,” “slavers”), who take back most of the salaries to repay recruitment costs, leaving many guards as essentially indentured servants. Or so we think, as most speak no English and have to suck up whatever gets dumped on them.

http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2011/05/11/state-department-army-in-iraq/?du

The former pertaining if EVERY ONE OF OUR TROOPS is out of that country on 01/01/12, the latter if anything short of such.

Uh...troops did come out of Iraq...about 90,000 troops were removed and the last load is coming out this summer.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/18/us-combat-troops-iraq_n_687019.html The draw down was 18 months not 2 weeks. Anyone who was paid attention was aware of this and wouldn't ask the question you did. With this in July of this year the last of the 50,000 are leaving Iraq.

Secondly Afghanistan is on the way out and that starts this summer in July. And the final troops in Afghanistan should be out in 2012. So to say that Obama is getting troops out is crap. And I've never heard of any President just pulling people out..it doesn't work that way.

I have heard regularly that we will have troops there past 2014.

As for Iraq, we will see. The latest coming from the DoD is that we would like to keep 10,000 or so after Dec 31. They seem to be encouraging Maliki to gain support for the idea so that it looks like a request from Iraq.

I'd say about an A. The last 50,000 leave in July.

I do understand the complex issues of extracting our people once Bush-the-idiot put us there. Iraq war was wrong-headed from the very beginning and I still dont think there is a net-positive from all the effort. The only significant "good" thing in my opinion is Sadam and his henchmen were taken out... but that could have been done in much simpler, cleaner and cheaper ways. Obama gets a passing grade but class is not out yet.

with regard to warmongering.

:spray:

relative to how many used to be there?

Yes, latest fatalities occurred on May 22nd, 2011. Any troops on the ground is far too many troops. The quantity "now" versus "then" is immaterial, until the "now" number becomes "0".

We have US soldiers as advisors in dozens of countries. US soldiers go on vacation and have heart attacks and get hit by cars. The quantity is never zero.

The zero standard is silly. The only reason one would set a 'zero' standard is to keep bashing President Obama.

:eyes:

Japan, Germany, Korea..

I predict the US military presence will shrink to pre WWII levels within 15 years. It is too expensive. "Always" is a long time. How many Roman troops are still stationed throughout the world? British? Soviet? History tends to support rapid drawdowns.

.

The number there now versus the number there prior is immaterial. It is an illegal occupation where US soldiers continue to die on a regular basis. That is the important factor, not that there are a few less troops there now than there were before.

its own private army of mercenaries.

"Relative to" is not as relevant as present reality.

Try again.

The idea that we have any presence there at all anymore is offensive and wrong.

It's the status of forces agreement that dates to months before the 2008 election. He hasn't bumped up the schedule. He's followed the schedule.

As with the S. Sudan peace treaty (badly frayed now) somehow the timetable plopped, unsigned and unnegotiated, from the sky simply because He Who Must Not Be Named was actually responsible for it. It allows people to assume that He Who Must Be Named was, consequently, responsible for it.

In fact, what a lot of cynics said * would do is precisely what's going on: There's discussion of extending the deadline for select categories of troops.

(Oddly, what a lot of cynics said Sudan would do is also precisely what's going on in S. Sudan. What those even more cynical said would happen is also happening: Nobody really gives a rip because nobody really cares about the Xians and animists in S. Sudan. Nobody did in the early 2000s, *after* Kosovo and Bosnia but before Darfur; Ms. Susan "Fight the Genocide" Powers managed to miss that one and only caught on to it after the issue was mostly solved--she was ranting about the offenses against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, and got her second wind only when able to rant against the offenses against Muslims in Darfur; her third wind is Libya.)

He's applied pushback on forces (the Pentagon, Gates, etc.) lobbying to stay in the ME indefinitely and to date remains on track. What matters is that the timetable is followed and we get the hell out of Dodge yesterday. Or ASAP.

On edit: I have to confess that when you mentioned Susan Powers, for a bit I thought you mistakenly were referring to a Susan Rice-Samantha Power hybrid. LOL. Derp.

If we don't care about people's lives, then he probably gets an A.

If we dock points for deaths, then he probably gets an F.

About .1 for a dead person. Still equals F.

keep some there after the deadline in December.

Kids STILL dying there. Period. End of Story

Does everyone know that 24 Americans have died in Iraq SO FAR this year?

In 2008, it was one of the top 2 issues for voters. What about this time around?

Still there, still no reason for us being there, still no clear cut end in sight.