Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) flat out rewrote history today with an untrue statement that blamed President Obama for the situation in Iraq because the president didn’t leave troops in the country.
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The Senator who cried wolf first claimed that ISIS is a terror threat to the United States, and then he rewrote history. Candy Crowley asked McCain what he would do about Iraq.
He answered, “I would do a lot of things that we can not have to wait for Maliki to leave. I would be giving assistance to the Free Syrian Army, which is on the ropes right now because we failed to help them. There’s a whole series of actions that we could take none of which have been enacted except for three airstrikes for specific and narrow reasons, and this all goes back to a number of steps that the president took including a failure to leave a residual force in Iraq.”
There is no other way to put this, but John McCain was lying. It wasn’t President Obama who negotiated the Status of Forces agreement. George W. Bush negotiated and signed an agreement with the Iraqi government in December 2008. The Iraqi government refused to give any remaining U.S. combat troops local immunity, which means that any combat troops that remained in the country could have faced prosecution from Iraqi authorities. By taking this step, the Iraqis made it clear that they wanted the U.S. combat troops out. It also means that the only way U.S. combat troops can go back in is if they are invited by the Iraqis.
What McCain is suggesting is that Obama should have ignored the sovereignty of the Iraqi people, and reinvaded their country, because that is what an unwelcome residual force of combat troops would be. John McCain is willing to violate an international agreement under the pretense of a terrorist threat that we don’t have any evidence of in order to keep a fighting force in Iraq.
The decision on whether or not to keep combat troops in Iraq was never Obama’s to make. George W. Bush and the Iraqi government made that decision. The American people were told by Republicans for nearly a decade that their troops were bleeding and dying for Iraqi freedom, but John McCain and his fellow Republicans are blaming Obama for not taking away that freedom.
Just because John McCain doesn’t like the decision that the Iraqis made to remove U.S. combat troops from their country doesn’t mean that President Obama is wrong for respecting their sovereignty. Obama called this argument bogus during his press conference yesterday, but it is even worse.
It is a lie that is being sold to the American people in order to justify an escalation of U.S. military activities in Iraq. John McCain is still trying to rewrite the failed history of the war that he continues to champion.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
