It IS GW's fault......

[LibraryLady]

The rise of Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq can be traced to America's invasion of the country more than a decade ago, as it left a power vacuum and unleashed sectarian bloodletting, experts said Friday.

With television footage of Sunni extremists sweeping across Iraq this week, critics of former president George W. Bush's decision to invade in 2003 said the onslaught offered yet more proof of the war's disastrous fallout.

Neoconservatives who backed Bush's decision touted the war as a way to build a model for democracy in the Middle East. Instead, it has fueled an explosive Sunni-Shiite divide that is still sending shockwaves through the region, experts said.

For University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole, events in Iraq are "an indictment of the George W. Bush administration, which falsely said it was going into Iraq because of a connection between Al-Qaeda and Baghdad."

"There was none," said Cole, an outspoken opponent of the invasion.

But by occupying and "weakening" Iraq, the Bush administration ironically created conditions that allowed Al-Qaeda "to take and hold territory in our own time," he wrote.

Cole also blamed Iraq's troubles on the legacy of European imperial meddling from a century ago, sectarian-minded leaders in Baghdad and a US-trained Iraqi army that ran away from the militants.

The late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was long painted as an arch-enemy by the United States, but more than ten years since US-led forces toppled his regime, his era appears relatively stable and innocuous compared to the virulent threats now engulfing Iraq and causing alarm in Washington.

Saddam's fall opened the door to an emboldened Iran extending its reach across the region, a Shiite-led government that has alienated Sunnis and helped give birth to Al-Qaeda linked extremists now entrenched in Iraq and Syria, analysts said.

Other commentators blamed the Bush administration for the wholesale dismantling of Baghdad's entire government apparatus without building an alternative.

- Destroying the Iraqi state -

"When the Americans invaded in March 2003, they destroyed the Iraqi state -- its military, its bureaucracy, its police force and most everything else that might hold a country together," wrote journalist and author Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker.

"They spent the next nine years trying to build a state to replace the one they crushed."

By the time US troops departed in 2011, there had been genuine progress but the Americans "were not finished with the job," Filkins wrote.

Obama wanted the American troops to come home, while Iraqi leaders "didn't particularly want them to stay," he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow had foreseen a fiasco from the outset.

"We warned long ago that the adventurism the Americans and the British started there would not end well," Lavrov said Thursday.

Without referring to Bush by name, Lavrov said the situation in Iraq has been "deteriorating at an exponential rate" ever since the Americans ousted Saddam.

But Republican hawks like Senator John McCain blame the current crisis on Obama.

McCain argues that a surge of US troops in 2007 helped rescue the war effort and accuses the White House of squandering those gains by pulling out American forces three years ago.

"We had it won. Thanks to the surge and thanks to general David Petraeus, we had it won," McCain told MSNBC television, referring to the former commander of US troops in Iraq.

"And then the decision was made by the Obama administration to not have a residual force in Iraq."

Obama's deputies insist the Iraqi government would not grant legal protections to US troops and so a deal to keep a smaller force there fell apart.

"There's plenty of room for finger-pointing for the debacle in Iraq. Let's not forget the disastrous decision to start the war in 2003 as the place to begin finger-pointing," Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former CIA officer, told AFP.

For both supporters and opponents of the war, the virtual collapse of the Iraqi army on the battlefield in the face of fighters inspired by Al-Qaeda has come as a sobering jolt.

"The trouble is, as the events of this week show, what the Americans left behind was an Iraqi state that was not able to stand on its own," wrote Filkins.

"What we built is now coming apart. This is the real legacy of America's war in Iraq."
http://news.yahoo.com/misguided-us-invasion-spawned-crisis-iraq-analysts-114839461.html

[Bob Of Burleson]

Well, before you start flying peace doves over Saddam's grave, note that the death toll from the current festivities in Iraq is miniscule compared to the hundreds of thousands who died in his wars with Iran.

[Red Oak]

The first Half-Wit Prof is half right; although Bush never linked Al-Queda with Saddam as near as I recall.

Bush's Folly is being exacerbated by Obama's Folly in failing to negotiate an agreement to keep some forces in place and his reckless actions in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.

[BillB]

Well, before you start flying peace doves over Saddam's grave, note that the death toll from the current festivities in Iraq is miniscule compared to the hundreds of thousands who died in his wars with Iran.

Read up on which nation promoted, aided and instigated Saddam's war with Iran.
Yep, you guessed it.

[Red Oak]

And many Dems went right along with Bush, until the going got tough, Bill, Hillary, and Kerry come to mind.

[Bob Of Burleson]

Well, before you start flying peace doves over Saddam's grave, note that the death toll from the current festivities in Iraq is miniscule compared to the hundreds of thousands who died in his wars with Iran.

Read up on which nation promoted, aided and instigated Saddam's war with Iran.
Yep, you guessed it.

The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Persian Gulf War, was an armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Iraq lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the 20th century's longest conventional war. It was initially referred to in English as the "Gulf War" prior to the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s.

The Iran–Iraq War began when Iraq invaded Iran via air and land on 22 September 1980. It followed a long history of border disputes, and was motivated by fears that the Iranian Revolution in 1979 would inspire insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority as well as Iraq's desire to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of Iran's revolutionary chaos and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and were quickly repelled; Iran regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive. A number of proxy forces participated in the war, most notably the Iranian Mujahedin-e-Khalq siding with Ba'athist Iraq and Iraqi Kurdish militias of Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan siding with Iran—all suffering a major blow by the end of the conflict.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

[BigTex]

What difference at this point does it make?

[BillB]

And many Dems went right along with Bush, until the going got tough, Bill, Hillary, and Kerry come to mind.

They were all wrong.

The most laughable defense of Bush is the one that goes- 'if Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, then so did Kerry, Hillary, Clinton etc, because they said the same thing'.

That's like saying 'If John Smith is a serial killer then so is Ted Bundy'.

[GFB]

This article is insultingly stupid.

Bush won the war with Saddam..then won the war with Al Qaeda..then had Iraq all set up for decades of progress, security, and stability.

Then Obama flushed it all down the toilet when he ordered the troops out..which at that point, had gained complete control of the country and casualties were basically nonexistent.

Anyone could see this coming.

This is the worst rewriting of history I've ever seen.

[BillB]

The first Half-Wit Prof is half right; although Bush never linked Al-Queda with Saddam as near as I recall.

Bush's Folly is being exacerbated by Obama's Folly in failing to negotiate an agreement to keep some forces in place and his reckless actions in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.

Sure Bush linked Saddam with al-qaeda:

Allegations of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were made by U.S. Government officials who claimed that a highly secretive relationship existed between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda from 1992 to 2003, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). In the lead up to the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush alleged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and militant group al-Qaeda might "conspire to launch terrorist attacks on the United States", basing the administration's rationale for war, in part, on this allegation and others...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hus ... llegations

[GFB]

You can argue whether we should have ousted Saddam, but there is no argument that..Obama took us out of the game when we were up by 100 points with 30 seconds to play.

HE SO OWNS this!

..and no way am I letting liberals and America haters get away with this...sorry.

[planosteve]

I don't blame W for anything during the Bush administration.
Because...I don't think he had anything to do with it.

[Bob Of Burleson]

I don't blame W for anything during the Bush administration.
Because...I don't think he had anything to do with it.

Certainly not in his first term.

[Red Oak]

And many Dems went right along with Bush, until the going got tough, Bill, Hillary, and Kerry come to mind.

They were all wrong.

The most laughable defense of Bush is the one that goes- 'if Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, then so did Kerry, Hillary, Clinton etc, because they said the same thing'.

That's like saying 'If John Smith is a serial killer then so is Ted Bundy'.

They didn't lie, they were for the most part wrong - one hell of a big difference.

[Red Oak]

You can argue whether we should have ousted Saddam, but there is no argument that..Obama took us out of the game when we were up by 100 points with 30 seconds to play.

HE SO OWNS this!

..and no way am I letting liberals and America haters get away with this...sorry.

Very true.

[BillB]

And many Dems went right along with Bush, until the going got tough, Bill, Hillary, and Kerry come to mind.

They were all wrong.

The most laughable defense of Bush is the one that goes- 'if Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq, then so did Kerry, Hillary, Clinton etc, because they said the same thing'.

That's like saying 'If John Smith is a serial killer then so is Ted Bundy'.

They didn't lie, they were for the most part wrong - one hell of a big difference.

Some of it was lies.
Rumsfeld:
"We know where the (weapons of mass destruction) are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."


He couldn't have known where WMDs were because there weren't any.

[GFB]

Some of it was lies.
Rumsfeld:
"We know where the (weapons of mass destruction) are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."


He couldn't have known where WMDs were because there weren't any.

Yes there were...and Rumsfeld was right.

Large storage houses of chemical weapons were found, that had been there so long they were not usable..but still dangerous.

[Mark]

"Obama is moving the chess pieces toward the destruction of Israel."

(Andrew Wilkow)

[BillB]

Some of it was lies.
Rumsfeld:
"We know where the (weapons of mass destruction) are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."


He couldn't have known where WMDs were because there weren't any.

Yes there were...and Rumsfeld was right.

Large storage houses of chemical weapons were found, that had been there so long they were not usable..but still dangerous.

I looked it up and you are right. I had missed that.
My apologies.

[GFB]

No apologies needed..let's just please keep the blame where it belongs.

Obama owns this!