Here's the deal: 1) Bush did get us into a war in Iraq that we shouldn't have gotten into; 2) in 2008/2009 when Bush left office and mostly because of the 2007 surge, the Sunni Islamic terrorists groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq were relatively powerless in Iraq, and Obama and Biden recognized that; 3) In 2007 Bush encouraged the next President, whoever he or she was, to leave an American military force in Iraq, and the suggestion was about 30,000 troops, and that this would be part of the renegotiation of the Status of Forces agreement that the next President would work out; 4) Obama ran on getting all U.S. military out of Iraq and vowed to keep that promise; 5) when Obama renegotiated the Status of Forces agreement it was for a much smaller force of about 5000 troops with a maximum of 10 thousand; 6) Critics say that this much smaller number gave Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki no leverage with members of the council to give American troops immunity; 7) Obama said he couldn't leave any troops in Iraq because of the lack of immunity; 8) Within weeks of the American pullout Al-Qaeda in Iraq/ISIL began attacking the Iraqi government and Shiites, and this continues to today.

So basically Bush shouldn't have sent us to Iraq in the first place and it's possible that if Obama had offered 30,000 troops then immunity would have been granted and ISIS would not have become the monster that it is today. It's not one or the other is true, both are true.

Also, even if ISIS was clamped down on in 2011, it doesn't mean it wouldn't have eventually happened. We, the United States, didn't create Boku Haram in Nigeria, which is an ISIS group. All of these groups came out of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was created in the 1920s. Hamas, Al Qaeda, Boku Haram and ISIS all derive from the MB. They exist in all continents.

thank you faithful. now, its going to be interesting how much this Iraq war is going to come back on jeb bush.
hes already made confusing statements concerning this issue.

I think its going to cost him the nomination from the republicans, he can't be trusted not to go back in Iraq with thousands of ground troops.

and nobody wants thst.

I think most Republicans don't want him. Personally, speaking as an independent, I like Rand Paul.

@faithful

so in other words you're blaming obama for isis

isis is a problem that started because of the iraq war

which u admitted bush started for no reason

which also means bush created isis because of the fallout of a fake war

'

Brilliant.

Nah bro, you got the wrong talking points from Obama Central. ISIS is a JV squad. It is no danger to the world. It is not core al qaeda. We left Iraq a strong and prosperous nation. The fact ISIS took two cities this week means they are losing. Iran, our best friend and allies, will take care of this for us.

He won't know this is sarcasm.

A. I didn't say that Bush started the Iraq War for no reason. He obviously had a reason. I said there was no real connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and that was one of the reasons we went to war. The other reasons were violating U.N. resolutions, firing on American planes in the No-Fly Zone, attempting to assassinate his George H. W. Bush, a history of using WMDs, a history of committing or attempting genocide, still having WMDs, attempting to obtain nukes, planning on developing a nuclear program, supporting terrorism, etc. Those are plenty of reasons.

B. Bush didn't create ISIS because if you read my posts, the group that became ISIS started out in northern Iraq in 2001, before the invasion of Iraq. Anwar al-Islam became Al Qaeda in Iraq and that became ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State.

C. The 2007 surge lead by General Petraeus was successful in defeating Sunni Islamist attacks in Iraq and led to increased peace, which Obama and Biden recognized before he pulled out U.S. troops.

D. Al Qaeda in Iraq resumed attacks about two weeks after we pulled out. That shows that they waited until we were gone, and it's evidence that if we still had a large presence there they probably wouldn't have started those attacks.

E. It wasn't a fake war.

4493 American families can attest to that

Amen to that, brother.

@littlenicky


we left iraq in rubble so how did we leave it a strong nation

a strong nation wouldn't need help from "insurgents"



@faithful

the iraq war was a giant fabrication.......BUSH ADMITTED IT HIMSELF

4493 americans were killed over a lie

I've already gone over this, but you want to ignore all that.

Please put up the link where Bush said he lied or fabricated. Not that he was mistaken, but lied. That means in his own words. A YouTube video of this admission would be great. I'm surprised that Media Matters and Mediaite haven't posted this admission.

What the fuck do you know about soldiers dying? What have you ever done for this country?

When one American soldier dies its a tragedy. They don't need someone like you to speak up for them.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-...stable-and-self

When President Barack Obama removed the last U.S. forces from Iraq in December 2011, he announced that—as he had planned—the U.S. was leaving behind a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government.”

It was a "moment of success," he said.

On Feb. 27, 2009, a little more than a month after his first inauguration, Obama gave a speech at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina that the White House entitled, “Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq.”

Obama said then that his strategy was based on the “achievable goal” of a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” Iraq--and that he intended to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, as had been envisioned in the Status of Forces agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration.

“Today, I can announce that our review is complete, and that the United States will pursue a new strategy to end the war in Iraq through a transition to full Iraqi responsibility,” said Obama. “This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant. To achieve that goal, we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists.”

“And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” said Obama. “We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”

Almost three years later, on Dec. 14, 2011, when he was removing the last U.S. troops from Iraq, Obama gave a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Here he said his strategy based on building a sovereign, stable, self-reliant Iraq had succeeded.

“It’s harder to end a war than begin one,” Obama said at Fort Bragg. “Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq--all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering--all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.”

In the past seven months, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—a terrorist group that sprang from al Qaeda—has captured Fallujah and Mosul, and is now intent on capturing the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

the Iraq army escapes your wrath, don't you think they can fight better than they have, if they stood up and fought like we americans they could run isis out of Iraq.

we had build our faith in the Iraqi army, and now they have been a failure, they need [Iraq army] to get together and drive out isis.

They (IA) sell our arms to Isis or in most cases just hand it over to them.

The ISIS fighters are more fierce than the Iraqis because a lot of them are drugged up. They take coke, meth, and whatever to hype them up and not care if they're killed and not care about human life. They also intimidate males to fight for them under threat of killing their families, and they know that those aren't empty threats.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/world/meast/syria-isis-prisoners-watson/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...ost-morale.html

http://nypost.com/2015/01/07/are-isis-fighters-fueled-by-piles-of-cocaine/

I said it a few times before, but the Sunni wing of the Iraqi army prefers to either help ISIS or stay neutral. Most officers are from the Saddam regime and they hate the current regime for their ties with the west and their religion(Shia). Binnie that's why Mosul and a handful of other places were handed down to ISIS together with a lot of supplies and money without even fighting.

And as for the ISIS fighters Faithful is right. I just want to add that most of the younger people are brainwashed by promises of heaven and martyrdom. A normal soldier would try to survive and fight on, while these guys don't give a damn about dying. The idea of martyrdom is one of the biggest reasons for them to fight without thinking about consequences.

isis was created because of the destabilization of iraq from fabricated reasons

iraq ain't rebuilt and i don't see any reason for them to fight for acres of rubble

iraq's army was blown to pieces by our millitary and then barely rebuilt

that's why isis is a force in the region

Iraq didn't get to rebuild because of the different religious and ethnic minorities killing each other. The struggles between the Shia and Sunni is a part of the reason ISIS could grow.

Iraq's army was destroyed true and makes me wonder how it was possible that many former pro-saddam officers got high positions in the army, while they were mostly secluded from the government.

And the growth of ISIS can be contributed to more factors, but I agree and think that the biggest factor is the lack of the will to fight by the Iraqi army that made ISIS what it is today.

Iran will takeover Iraq. Isis is nothing to the danger Iran poses.

Iran is fighting Isis let them, and it should be without the help of the U.S.

It basically is Blackwater, but funded by the rich oil tycoons in the middle east. They have money to spend and they are recruiting guys.

In case anyone is interested, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post (the first half of the Woodward-Bernstein team famous for the Watergate investigation) was on Fox News Sunday this past Sunday (May 24, 2015) being interviewed by Chris Wallace. Here's what he had to say about Bush lying about Iraq and Obama and ISIS:

WOODWARD: Yes. Well, I mean Iraq is a symbol. And you certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake. But there is a time that line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don't let anyone stretch the case on WMD. And he was the one who was skeptical. And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two. And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months. And so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lying in this that I could find.

WALLACE: And what about 2011 and Obama's decision to pull all the troops out? There had been the status of forces agreement between Bush and the Iraqi government that provided for a follow on force. The Pentagon was talking about somewhere between 10,000 or 20,000. And a lot of people think, although, Obama says well, we tried to negotiate and we didn't. A lot of people think he really didn't want to keep any troops there.

WOODWARD: Well, I think he didn't. Look, Obama does not like war. But as you look back on this, the argument from the military was, let's keep 10,000, 15,000 troops there as an insurance policy. And we all know insurance policies make sense. We have 30,000 troops or more in South Korea still 65 years or so after the war. When you are a superpower, you have to buy these insurance policies. And he didn't in this case. I don't think you can say everything is because of that decision, but clearly a factor.

That is why I blame Obama for ISIS. Contingency force would have been the best route. Hands down our president isn't anywhere near an intelligent human being. I am surprised Darwinism, Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest hasn't taken effect on him yet like tripping on a banana peel or choking on a peanut.

obama ain't got shit to do with a bunch of mad middle easterners

they were mad and hated us long before obama took office

then we blew up their country and other arab nations/states think they're next

The Darwinism remark applies to you as well, Cook.

^^^^

you're not that thought provoking, just "conservative" about your views

we blew up a whole country and now different groups are fighting for power

sounds fucked up but it's reality

bush or i should say cheney, is responsible for the mess in Iraq. as far as isis goes, what do you expect when you demolish saadams army, and leave them weapons.

I firmly believe bush was cheneys puppet, cheney pulled the strings to get us into Iraq, where he [cheney ] made millions with his partner haliburton. it was all contrived to make cheney rich.

my opinion only.

If Bush was Cheney's puppet then why didn't Bush pardon Scooter Libby? Cheney pleaded with him to pardon Libby, but he only commuted his sentence. The fact is Cheney was influential, but Bush made all the final decisions.

^ Agreed. Blame the idiots who put Obama into office in the first place.