TRUMP: "When President Obama pulled out of Iraq in theory we had Iraq. In other words, we had Iraq. So when he did what he did in Iraq, which was a mistake. Being in Iraq was a mistake. Okay.Guess what, genius?
Being in Iraq- it was a big mistake to go- one of the greatest mistakes going into the Middle East that our country has ever made. One of the greatest mistakes that we've ever made--
BRENNAN: But you want to keep troops there now?
TRUMP: --but when it was chosen-- well, we spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it. And one of the reasons I want to keep it is because I want to be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is a real problem.
BRENNAN: Whoa, that's news. You're keeping troops in Iraq because you want to be able to strike in Iran?
TRUMP: No, because I want to be able to watch Iran. All I want to do is be able to watch. We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It's perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up. And this is what a lot of people don't understand. We're going to keep watching and we're going to keep seeing and if there's trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we're going to know it before they do."
The cover story for the continued US presence in Iraq is to mop up the Islamic State. The Iraqi leadership made it damn crystal clear back in 2011 that they had NO interest in keeping US forces around if the latter were unwilling to sign off on a conventional Status of Forces Agreement that put the Iraqis in charge. I'm not saying I blame the then-US-government for not signing; if I was a GI I'd be scared as hell of winding up in an Iraqi court after killing someone in a traffic accident. But that ship has sailed, and to keep GIs in-country we, and the Iraqis, have to pretend. This dumbass obviously missed that memo big-time.
He probably thinks that because it's a shithole country the people there spend their time telling each other stories, but Orange Foolius apparently doesn't get that the leaders of the Iraqi legislature have televisions, too. Only they don't just watch FOX. In fact, they have people watching you shoot off your big blabbermouth on CBS, and you just told them that 1) you have no intention of leaving that "incredible base"...in other words, you see it the way the British did their colonial installations and the MNF-I did theirs when the US was officially an occupying power, that 2) you intend to use it for power projection, which is something that powers can only do with the acquiescence of the host nation, and that 3) this projection is going to be directed primarily at their ally, Iran.
Jesus wept.
I get that a
WASSSSSSSSSSSSF.
The Iraqi Parliament has other ideas.
ReplyDeleteAnd so do the many Shiite militias. The leader of Iraq's Hezbollah says they will take immediate action against American troops if Parliament does not act. They are well armed by both us (via the Iraqi government) and by Iran's IRGC.
MoronDon needs to stick to golf.
This...it...I...What the fucking actual fuck?????
DeleteChrist, this isn't goddamn rocket science. The Iraqis know we're there snooping on the Iranians, and we know they know, and the Iranians know, too. And that's fine; their Quds Force people are spying on us, and the Iraqis are spying on them, and everybody's good so long as everybody keeps their goddamn traps shut and, if asked, parrots the official line.
But this stupid goddamn sonofabitch is too damn stupid to remember the official line (and probably didn't bother to learn it to begin with) so he just blabs out whatever is rattling around in his empty goddamn head. It's like having freaking Kermit the Frog as president except we don't really know who, if anyone's, hand is up his ass.
What the hell is "too stupid" to make the Trumpkins 86 this guy? Does he REALLY have to shoot somebody on 5th Avenue? Sweetbabyjesus.
The Trumpers will find some reason to love him even more if he murders somebody. They'd call it justifiable homicide and would say the vic was a libtard and had it coming.
DeleteMeanwhile Russian Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East is in Baghdad talking strategic cooperation with the Iraqi PM.
I'd be talking to anyone else, too. This maroon is clearly incompetent to run a raffle. The Russians are goons, but they're at least predictable goons.
Delete"I get that a plurality of the American people wanted this joker."
ReplyDeletewrong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#Candidates_table
Fixed.
DeleteI kind of wonder how seriously the rest of the world takes what he says at this point. I mean, the Iraqi's aren't dumb and they are playing the game too for all they can get and I think they understand the reality even if, politically speaking, they can't admit it publicly.
ReplyDeleteHopefully this is nothing more than a typical Trump embarrassment and not something that costs American lives.
Andy -
ReplyDeleteI hope you are right. But I'm not soothed by the news coming out of Iraq & Iran.
Construction has started on a short stretch of modern highway from Kermanshah which will eventually connect Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. That is going to drive the neocons crazy and increase their efforts to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran; and/or increase support to rebels in Iranian Khuzestani and Baluchistani districts.
Plus Quds Force General Soleimani is busy helping to select the Iraqi Minister of Defense and Minister of the Interior.
Sistani has also jumped in to the argument over the US using bases in Iraq to watch Iran. He is being listened to in the Iraqi Parliament and his advice will be followed by the majority there, which means they will ask us to leave.
If we are asked will we leave? Or will we abandon the Baghdad-Damascus roadblock we have at al-Tanf? I suspect there is going to be max pressure to at the least keep al-Tanf.
BTW I don't think we have a SOFA for our troops in Iraq, or was that negotiated?
No, there is no SOFA for Iraq. But our troops aren't doing anything in Iraq either, except maybe some training (AFAIK). It's mainly airpower, SOF and some enabling functions (CSAR, ISR, etc.) supporting the fight against ISIS in Syria.
DeleteAndy: I think there is a difference between the Iraqi pols - who are sort of "in on" the game and have something to gain from US airpower and logistical/instructional support for their jawans (if nothing else) - and the militias and Joe Iraqi on the street, who don't see the quid-pro-quo. The problem comes when the brokers in Baghdad try to play Uncle Sammy and the guys in the street just won't play along. That's when GIs and Iraqis get hurt and killed.
ReplyDeleteWhat's frustrating is that there's NO reason for this to be a "typical Trump embarrassment". This is OPSEC 101, the thing Orange Foolius rants about Obama doing - "giving away" intel that helps people who want to do US interests and Americans harm. All he had to do was keep his big orange trap shut. Or, if he couldn't do that, remember the simple cover story about how we're all just good buddies helping our Iraqi pals with those nasty ol' head-cutting, duct-taping "radical Islamic terrorists".
But the dumb fucker couldn't even do that right.
mike: On the SOFA; no. The problem was that the Iraqis, who like many former European-colonized peoples, are hypersensitive about "extraterritoriality", the old colonial game where the White Man didn't have to take up the local's Burden - they were except from the local laws.
The Iraqis wanted the right to try foreign military that broke the local laws in local courts. The US government said no, and, like I said, I don't exactly blame them. Given the corruptability of the Iraqi legal system the idea of driving my GAMA Goat down into Ramadi and getting into a traffic accident where some poor joker gets killed and ending up in an Iraqi court would scare the living piss out of me.
But that was the deal-killer, and the Iraqis came down on the side of GTFO. The IS crisis brought the GIs back, but the SOFA was never readdressed, and there is none in place now.
It's hard to recall now (given the amazing record or ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision that has surrounded the Iraq Misadvanture) that the initial SOFA "negotiations" were so insane as to be barely believable to anyone who hadn't lived through the Bush Administration. The original US negotiating points were utterly ridiculous; I wrote a long post about them: https://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2008/06/lying-on-sofa.html
But the most fundamental problem - the Iraqis weren't OK with extraterritoriality, and the US didn't want to put its servicepeople at risk of an Iraqi jail - just couldn't be evaded.
Yeah, I agree. I would just add that since there is no SOFA our forces aren't doing anything in Iraq - they're confined to secured bases. Because of that, I'm not too worried about Joe's in the street and the militias.
DeleteBut they are doing training of Iraqi mil and police personnel on those secure bases. With live ammo. Insider killings became common in Afghanistan. Replays?
DeleteAnd secure bases are not immune to mortars, artillery and rockets. The PMFs have plenty of those. Yes, I know we would retaliate strongly and probably wipe out the insider attacker or outside mortarmen. But I kind of doubt that foreknowledge of an early demise would stop determined Shi'a militias. Although suicide attacks are now primarily a tool of Sunni takfirist jihadis, the Shi'a were the one of the first to turn suicide into a "tool of modern terrorist warfare"
Probably won't happen. Unless maybe MoronDon treats the legislators in Iraqi Parliament to the same way he treats US Congresscritters.
Yeah, all possibilities for sure.
DeleteThrow in the three-letter people who have to move around, logpac drivers, adding the risk of an angry Shiite with a MANPADS...like I said; what galls the hell out of me is the needless risk this dumb draft-dodging sonofabitch and his big flappy mouth created for people who work for him.
ReplyDeleteWhich any groundskeeper or maid at Mar-a-lago could have told them. That’s this worthless oxygen-thief’s style; screw everyone and grab the cash.
In related news (source Col David Witty USA Retired):
ReplyDelete1] Iraqi MP from Fatah Coalition: the PM, political leaders & PMF have agreed on a political confrontation with the US but not a military confrontation. A military confrontation would not be in Iraq’s interests. http://mobp.as/Wdsro
2] Syrian Foreign Minister: we have a duty to protect Iranian Forces in Syria. http://mobp.as/wvXqo (in Arabic - translation by Col David Witty USA retired)
3] Pentagon walks back Trump idea of using Iraq base to counter Iran.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/02/pentagon-walks-back-trump-idea-iraq-base-counter-iran.html
#1 above is huge good news.
DeleteThe Fatah Coalition mentioned, AKA Fatah Alliance, is a major bloc of political groups all involved with the Shi'a PMF militias. Members "include the Badr Organisation, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib al-Imam Ali."
Leader of the Fatah Alliance is Hadi al-Amiri who has "...very close ties to the Iranian leadership—and in particular the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,...". Which would indicate that Tehran is smart enough to not give MoronDon an excuse to launch cruise missiles against the Semnan Space Center (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semnan_Space_Center). For now anyway.
Of course, the problem with #3 is the same problem as always with DJT; the corrections/revisions/fact-checking is always slower and smaller than the impact of the comb-over's blowhard blabbermouth. The US had the same problem during the occupation; we'd talk a good game until some idiot private tortured a prisoner or three, or some specialist having a bad day would blow a family away at a checkpoint, at which point all our words were so much hot air...
DeleteThat's the main issue I have with the "Donald the Dove" meme (Bachevich has something to that effect up at Tomdispatch - http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176523/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_what_matters_and_what_doesn%27t/#more); Trump and the Trumpkins aren't really against the idea of pointless foreign adventuring. He, and they, want to profit from pointless foreign adventuring. So if we're not taking Iraqi oil, why bother? If we can't use that "great, expensive base" to spy on Iran, why bother? Afghanistan - which really doesn't have anything lucrative to offer the Trump Corporation (given that China has been busy locking up things like mineral rights...) is REALLY pointless.
But the GOP (and, sadly, WAY too many interventionist Democrats) has never renounced the Ledeen Doctrine.
Maybe this group of Iraqi militia did not get the word that pushback against the US was going to be political rather than kinetic? Or maybe they are not part of the Fatah Alliance?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/iraq/499958
Or maybe the story is BS?