Obama’s hidden war in Iraq
Chief Tango sends us a link to the Wall Street Journal, where William McGurn reminds us that it was 45-years ago this month that John Kerry complained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the troops who were giving their lives up so that the Nixon Administration didn’t have to own up to their mistakes in Vietnam;
Today, as secretary of state, Mr. Kerry travels about the world rationalizing an Iraq policy designed to keep President Obama from having to admit his mistake: that he has only made worse a war he claimed to have ended….In an interview aired Sunday on Fox News, President Obama declared that his “number one priority right now” is defeating Islamic State. But how does the man who sees himself as the guy who gets America out of its wars deal with the contradiction?
Part of the answer seems to be fudging the troop numbers. Officially U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan are capped at 3,870 and 9,800 respectively. But after a Marine in northern Iraq—Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin—was killed in an ISIS rocket attack, the Pentagon was forced to admit there are as many as 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Only then did Americans learn that men such as Staff Sgt. Cardin are not included in the official troop count because they were rotated in on a temporary basis.
Things won’t change with the next president, either. Obama has only changed the words we use;
Mrs. Clinton has her own version of the charade. “I will not send American combat troops to Iraq or Syria,” she has declared in more than one primary debate. Instead, she says, “we will continue to use Special Forces.”
I’m sure Special Forces soldiers in Syria and Iraq will be surprised to learn that they’re not combat troops. I’m sure it would surprise Staff Sergeant Cardin, too. It appears that Obama and Kerry aren’t the only people in the Democrat Party who are pretending that there’s no war in Iraq. Or contingency operations or whatever word they’re using these days to hide the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President only makes wars worse while he’s pretending to end them. And America’s best and brightest are shedding their blood for weasel words.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, John Kerry, Terror War
If the administration leaves Syria outside the combat zone, those troops don’t count either.
The wicked bitch of the east will not use combat troops..but will instead send special forces? WTF does she think they are McDonalds employees? That idiot should be put in a home somewhere and throw away the key…she is completely insane imho!
There are several big differences between Special Forces Soldiers and McDonalds employees. One major difference with regards to this administration is that they will fight to get the McDonalds employee a $15.00 an hour minimum wage while the Soldiers are lucky to get a 1% raise. It almost makes me dizzy with how screwed up and backwards everything is.
What a bunch of snakes.
I feel like singing a hymn. Except it should probably be called a them.
Band members aren’t Combat Troops. Maybe you’re on to something SFC D…
Okay, we either go in full tilt and blow the bastards to Kingdom Come, or we get the hell out of it, build a freaking wall around the Middle East, and let them kill each other off.
Period.
I suppose that makes me a ‘bad guy’. Yeah, well, I don’t give a flying fart in space what anyone thinks of my opinion.
Given the opportunity the sand in the ME should become the same color as the Georgia clay so popularly described in that song from 1971….
Then what’s left can be assimilated or dominated, after all what’s the point of being an Apex predator if you can Apex every once in a while?
can should be can’t damn phones…
And make Mexico pay for it.
Sergeant-major, Lieutenant-colonel, Major-general and now CPL/major,,, cool, I like it?
When politicians speak…..reality goes out the window.
(LIGHT BULB REVELATION!!)
Are you saying that Politicians are the Good Idea Fairies?! Ya’know, those same GIFs that every military wants to throttle the living shit out of?
Well, I guess that demonstrates in one sentence Shrillary’s competence to be the Commander in Chief
Ain’t that the truth David. Hillary becoming NCA scares the crap out of me. Can you imagine this super-crony fraud having nuclear command decision power?
The warheads that are still usable will be for sale to the highest bidder.
Mrs. Clinton has her own version of the charade. “I will not send American combat troops to Iraq or Syria,” she has declared in more than one primary debate. Instead, she says, “we will continue to use Special Forces.”
Maybe her plan is to arbitrarily assign all troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as Army MOS 18s. See, no more combat troops there, only “Special Forces”…
Better idea: let’s send HER over there and throw the return ticket away.
“Hillbo: First Blood”; yeah, I can dig it…
Contractor numbers are back on the rise too so I don’t see them leaving anytime soon.
Could you imagine the batshit in the streets if the former president was caught hiding troop numbers?
The hypocrisy of the left is atrocious.
Naw, you know the left never has to deal with repercussions of any lies.
No, never. They can hang people in effigy, disrupt a meeting, shit on a police car (Occupy), rampage through the streets, block bridge and roadway traffic, tell racist jokes, curtail others’ free speech, and it’s the conservatives who are the ruffians and the intolerant ones. How exactly does that work? By ignoring facts.
Technically, SOF units are not “combat troops” in that their job is to do other things than find the enemy and kill them and take their ground, which is what the regular infantry is for. SOF trains foreign troops, sends teams after high value individuals, collects intelligence, etc. Nobody is arguing whether it’s dangerous or not, but conventional combat and hazardous duty don’t quite mean the same things. The Marine that was killed was setting up a fire base to support host nation troops, not fapped out to an infantry squad to do capture/kill missions. Most in the military don’t make this distinction, but it’s an important one to make.
Moreover, I know that Marines in of themselves are not technically SOF as they don’t fall under SOCOM, but they are often found performing similar missions in theater anyway.
It isn’t just Obama who is ignoring this on going war. Congress has failed to live up to it’s responsibility to debate the on going war in Iraq and Syria. We are surrounded by chicken hawks who like to talk big but hide when it comes time to put their names on any documents which might prove to be a political embarrassment and liability at reelection time. Where is Paul Ryan? Why doesn’t he push this debate to the floor. I know, playing golf with lobbyist from Oscar Meyer.
As far as the contractor numbers go, I can vouch for that. I’m deployed to Kandahar right now and contractors outnumber green suiters by a margin of 3-1 and that’s a conservative estimate. It’s mind boggling how many contractors there are here. I’ve never seen anything like it and I was in Iraq for a good portion of the surge years when contractors were everywhere.
Makes sense…when I was there, we didn’t count in the official statistics if we were killed yet we did close to the same jobs as most military personnel (short of offensive combat). The government gets the benefit of experienced people working while the contractors get a mediocre pay check. That’s the dirty little secret about defense contracting.