Dear All,
This is the second article published in “The Truth and Nothing but the Truth” challenging the veracity and character of President Barack H. Obama.
The president has on several occasions tried to “pass the buck” and deny that he has any responsibility for the horrible atrocities going on in Iraq (and Syria).
These articles provided by Obama’s own former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta confirm that the president is not to be believed when he says he had no choice but to remove all of our troops.
Yet again, he lied to the citizens of our nation; is he even capable of telling the truth?
Ron Kirkish
Leon Panetta: How the White House Misplayed Iraqi Troop Talks
Leon Panetta - Oct. 1, 2014
Leon Panetta served as the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011, and as secretary of defense from 2011 to
2013.
As U.S. forces return to Iraq to counter the surging al-Qaeda splinter group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, President Obama’s former Secretary of Defense and CIA chief recalls the White House debates that led to America’s departure from the country.
His new book, with Jim Newton, Worthy Fights: A
Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, from which this article is adapted, will
be published on Oct. 7.
Through the fall of 2011, the main question facing
the American military in Iraq was what our role would be now that combat
operations were over.
When President Obama announced the end of our combat
mission in August 2010, he acknowledged that we would maintain troops for a
while.
Now that the deadline was upon us, however, it was
clear to me—and many others—that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the
fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together.
Privately, the various leadership factions in Iraq
all confided that they wanted some U.S. forces to remain as a bulwark against
sectarian violence.
But none was willing to take that position publicly,
and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki concluded that any Status of Forces
Agreement, which would give legal protection to those forces, would have to be
submitted to the Iraqi parliament for approval.
That made reaching agreement very difficult given
the internal politics of Iraq, but representatives of the Defense and State
departments, with scrutiny from the White House, tried to reach a deal.
We had leverage.
We could, for instance, have threatened to withdraw
reconstruction aid to Iraq if al-Maliki would not support some sort of
continued U.S. military presence.
My fear, as I voiced to the President and others,
was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we’d
seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a
new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S. Iraq’s stability was
not only in Iraq’s interest but also in ours.
I privately and publicly advocated for a residual
force that could provide training and security for Iraq’s military.
Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy did her
best to press that position, which reflected not just my views but also those
of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs.
But the President’s team at the White House pushed
back, and the differences occasionally became heated.
Flournoy argued our case, and those on our side
viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to
withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and
interests.
We debated with al-Maliki even as we debated among
ourselves, with time running out.
The clock wound down in December, and Deputy
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter continued to argue our case, extending the
deadline for the Iraqis to act, hoping that we might pull out a last-minute
agreement and recognizing that once our forces left, it would be essentially
impossible for them to turn around and return.
To my frustration, the White House coordinated the
negotiations but never really led them.
Officials there seemed content to endorse an
agreement if State and Defense could reach one, but without the President’s
active advocacy, al-Maliki was allowed to slip away. The deal never materialized.
To this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop
presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to
deal with al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed
the country.
Over the following two and a half years, the
situation in Iraq slowly deteriorated. Al-Maliki was responsible, as he
exacerbated the deep sectarian issues polarizing his country.
Meanwhile, with the conflict in Syria raging, an
al-Qaeda offshoot—ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria—gained
strength.
Using Syria as its base, it began to move into Iraq
in 2014, grabbing power in towns and villages across Iraq’s north, including
Mosul and Tall ‘Afar.
These were strategically important cities that U.S.
forces had fought and died to secure.
From Worthy
Fights, by Leon Panetta and Jim Newton, to be published on October 7,
2014 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Copyright ©
2014 by Leon Panetta.
Leon Panetta
served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011,
and as secretary of defense from 2011 to 2013. He was a member of the U.S.
House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993, the director of the Office of
Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994, and President Clinton’s chief of staff
from 1994 to 1997. He is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy,
and has served as professor of public policy at his alma mater, Santa Clara
University.
Jim Newton
is an editor at large of the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked for
twenty-five years as a reporter, an editor, a bureau chief, and a columnist. He
is the author of two critically acclaimed biographies, Justice
for All and Eisenhower.
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