Obama: "What's Happening In Iraq Isn't My Fault !"

I don't know which is worse..the constant lies and excuses or the press that refuses to challenge them.

Here's President Barack Hussein Obama speaking last week on nationwide television: " I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done."

DrewM at AoSHQ (h/t, my pal Debra Heine over at Breitbart) dredged another interesting quote out of the memory banks, from October, 2011:

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end -- for the sake of our national security and to strengthen American leadership around the world. After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011. As Commander-in-Chief, ensuring the success of this strategy has been one of my highest national security priorities. Last year, I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq. And to date, we’ve removed more than 100,000 troops. Iraqis have taken full responsibility for their country’s security.

A few hours ago I spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. I reaffirmed that the United States keeps its commitments. He spoke of the determination of the Iraqi people to forge their own future. We are in full agreement about how to move forward.

So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.

On the South Lawn of the White House today, after Obama explained why he had ordered the U.S. military to renew airstrikes in Iraq, a reporter, Scott Wilson of the Washington Post noticed a slight discrepancy.

When a reporter asked President Obama about his decision to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq, all of a sudden it wasn't his decision, and nothing that happened was his fault:

President Obama surprised a few people during a news conference Thursday by claiming that the 2011 decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, a politically popular move on the eve of an election year, was made entirely by his Iraqi counterpart. The implication ran counter to a number of claims that Obama has made in the past, most notably during a tight campaign season two years ago, when he suggested that it was his decision to leave Iraq and end an unpopular war.

“Do you wish you had left a residual force in Iraq? Any regrets about that decision in 2011?” a reporter asked.

“Well, keep in mind that wasn’t a decision made by me,” Obama said. “That was a decision made by the Iraqi government.”

Wilson also recalls the Obama Romney debate, in which the president emphatically declared he wanted every U.S. soldier pulled out of Iraq and took credit for doing it...something he now declares was somebody else's decision:

"With regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should be a status of forces agreement," Romney told Obama as the two convened on the Lynn University campus in Boca Raton, Fla., that October evening. "That’s not true," Obama interjected. “Oh, you didn't want a status of forces agreement?” Romney asked as an argument ensued. “No,” Obama said. “What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.”

President Obama is correct that the decision to get all American forces out of Iraq was the decision of the Maliki government. The fact that he chest thumped about how this was his decision for 3 years? Just another in a long string of self-serving egregious lies.

That being said, let's get something straight - what's going on in Iraq and in the Middle East right now is entirely the fault of President Barack Obama and his team.

It was Senator Barack Obama, along with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Harry Reid and Senator Joe Biden along with many other Democrats who did their very best to sabotage our war effort in Iraq. They played endless games with funding and re-supply (in other words, with our troops' lives). They worked night and day to obstruct and make a failure out of the surge strategy and insult and belittle its architect and commander, General David Petraeus. They put forth a huge effort to discredit both the general and his strategy with the American public. And they did it all expressly with partisan politics in mind, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates revealed in his recent memoirs.

Gates, who served in the Bush Administration and the first Obama Administration makes no effort to hide the anger he felt hearing these senators (three of whom ran for president) laughingly admit to him that it was all 'just politics.'

And those 'politics' undermined President Bush's position with the American people and with Maliki and the fledgling Iraqi government, to the point that they felt able to simply tell us to leave without a Disposition of forces agreement..something we see President Obama actively opposed then when it was politically expedient and now says 'wasn't my decision.'

Even more to the point was President Obama's undermining of our relationship with Israel, Egypt, the Saudis and the Gulf Emirates, his appeasement of Iran, his assassination of Osama bin-Laden that helped al-Qaeda's resurgence in the Middle East, his ill advised and illegal war in Libya against Khaddaffi on behalf of Islamist and Salafist jihadis in Benghazi that created a failed state in Libya and put Khaddafi's arsenal of weapons in jihadi hands, his attempt to empower the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, and worst of all his secret arming and training of what became ISIS and has now morphed into Islamic State.

Try as he might to spin it, to blame someone else for his failures, this debacle is entirely of his making.