CHESSNOID

OK,  you know I have been against this war from the beginning. I never bought in to the propaganda the media was feeding Americans that felt justified in invading Iraq.   Frankly, if you thought or still think it was the right thing to do for whatever reason, you are simply an idiot and probably thought President Bush was the best.

So here we are going on the 7th month into Obama’s presidency.  He campaigned to have the troops completely out within 16 months. So the clock is ticking and that leaves us with 9 months.  Technically it is already impossible since they would of had to have begun troop withdrawals in his first month.  I am trying to be objective about his performance which is unlike most of the media who is in love with him for whatever reason.

President Bush did a poor job and President Obama looks like he will actually be worse than him.  Hard to believe but actions speak louder than words.  He made promises and did not deliver.  He inflated the budget to astronomical levels that even amaze Bush’s administration.  You can only blame the former administration for he inherited, but Obama will have to take the blame for everything he has initiated on top of that which is a worsening economy and growing budget deficit.

In the NY Times, I see an excellent article about a US Adviser stating it’s time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”  Bringing the troops home  in 16 months was one of Obama’s biggest promises.

NY Times: U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’

For all of these problems, however, Colonel Reese argues that Iraqi forces are competent enough to hold off Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and other internal threats to the Iraqi government. Extending the American military presence in Iraq beyond 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling a growing resentment.

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

A spokeswoman for Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the United States military, was not intended for a broad audience, and that some of the problems the memo referred to had been solved since its writing in early July.

Referring to the Iraq Security Forces, the memo said: “The massive partnering efforts of U.S. combat forces with I.S.F. isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition. We should declare our intentions to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Iraq by August 2010. This would not be a strategic paradigm shift, but an acceleration of existing U.S. plans by some 15 months.”

Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.

Colonel Reese’s memo comes at a sensitive time in the Iraq conflict as American forces are gradually shifting to an advisory role. American combat troops moved out of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities last month, as required by the Status of Forces Agreement concluded by the United States and Iraq.

Colonel Reese’s memo lists a number of problems that have emerged since the withdrawal. They include, he wrote, a “sudden coolness” to American advisers and the “forcible takeover” of a checkpoint in the Green Zone. Iraqi units, he added, are much less willing to conduct joint operations with their American counterparts “to go after targets the U.S. considers high value.”

The Iraqi Ground Forces Command, Colonel Reese wrote, has imposed “unilateral restrictions” on American military operations that “violate the most basic aspects” of American-Iraqi agreement.