Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
Victory by achieving tactical and strategic objectives? What might that be? There was no al-Qaeda running in Iraq because Saddam kept them out to keep his power. We overthrew a Sunni majority and installed a Shiite power through "democratic" elections. There is no successful end to this. At some point, the US would have had to pull out. Didn't Obama want to keep troops in Iraq in small numbers but Maliki refused to provide immunity to the US soldiers from Iraqi law? In any case whether last year or 5 years from now, once US soldiers were gone Iraq was going towards a civil war.
AQ not "running" Iraq? I'd say that you're correct. But Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist jihadis. The Pentagon announced back in 2008 that an investigation into over 600,000 documents captured at the end of the invasion of Iraq showed operational links to al-Qaeda affiliated groups.
Here are excerpts from that report:
Take a look at (Extract 25) "The Army of Muhammad is working with Osama bin Laden. … “this organization is an offshoot of bin Laden, but that their objectives are similar but with different names that can be a way of camouflaging the organization.”
On pages 34-35 of the report, we find communications between their Bahrain agent and IIS (Iraqi Intelligence Service) headquarters the Iraqis list their aims as attacking Jewish and American interests anywhere in the world, attacking American embassies, disrupting American oil supplies and tankers, and attacking the American military bases in the Middle East. A later memorandum from the same collection to the Director of the IIS reports that the Army of Muhammad is endeavoring to receive assistance [from Iraq] to implement its objectives, and that the local IIS station has been told to deal with them in accordance with priorities previously established.
The Iraqi support for AoM may not be an operational link, but it’s certainly a financial link that goes right to Osama bin Laden.
The most recent military conflict during which the Left rooted for an American victory was World War II. In every fight since that time, the American Left has mischaracterized US involvement as being avaricious, acquisitive, imperialistic, or genocidal. During recent wars, the Left have augmented their practice of impugning American motives by also maligning American troops, who have been smeared as being thieves, rapists, torturers, and baby killers.
And those are just the slurs issued by our current secretary of state.
ShyGuy, you simply do not know what you are talking about.
http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf