rickyp wrote:I just don't think outside groups can impose a solution on the region. (As much as Fate thinks ("We're the freaking USA")

My comment was regarding our capacity to send arms to the Kurds

rickyp wrote:fate

My comment was regarding our capacity to send arms to the Kurds

Which you understand is against US law? (And against the NATO accords BTW)
So splain that Lucy.

I thought you'd gone away. How can I miss you if you won't?

Your attitude towards just about anything regarding foreign policy is not just reflected in your resort to the phrase regarding the arming of Kurds. Its the same attitude you demonstrate when you insist Obama could have negotiated a SOFA in Iraq.... absent any reason other than, but we're the USA!!!

It’s the White House itself that decided just 2–3,000 troops made sense, when the Defense Department and others were proposing more. Maliki was willing to accept a deal with U.S. forces if it was worth it to him — the problem was that the Obama administration wanted a small force so that it could say it had ended the war. Having a very small American force wasn’t worth the domestic political price Maliki would have to pay for supporting their presence. In other words, it’s not correct that “the al-Maliki government wanted American troops to leave.” That contradicts the reporting that’s been done on the issue by well-known neocon propaganda factories The New Yorker and the New York Times. Prime Minister Maliki did say in public, at times, that he personally couldn’t offer the guarantees necessary to keep U.S. troops in the country, but it’s well-established that behind closed doors, he was interested in a substantial U.S. presence. The Obama administration, in fact, doesn’t even really deny it: For Dexter Filkins’s New Yorker story, deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes didn’t dispute this issue, he just argued that a U.S. troop presence wouldn’t have been a panacea.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/38 ... ck-brennan

Its superficial and simplistic and doesn't reflect any learning from recent events.

Imposing the will of the US on any situation through force of arms or force of will has not happened in a long time in the Middle East.

On any matter. Why you persist in thinking there is something that can be done just by trying harder or talking louder ....is Trumpian. That is disconnected from the facts or reality.
But sounds good to a certain group of ignoramuses.

Sharyl Attkisson said her sources have told her that President Barack Obama does not want and will not read intelligence reports on groups “he does not consider terrorists,” despite being on a U.S. list of designated terrorists.

Attkisson said, “I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind. I would say closed his mind, they say, to their intelligence that they’ve tried to bring him about various groups that he does not consider terrorists, even if they are on the U.S. list of designated terrorists. He has his own ideas, and there are those who’ve known him a long time who say this dates back to law school. He does not necessarily—you may think it’s a good trait you may think it’s a bad trait—he does not necessarily listen to the people with whom he disagrees. He seems to dig in. I would suppose because he thinks he’s right. He is facing formidable opposition on this particular point.”

Attkisson continued, “I don’t know the reason for it. I’ve only been told by those who have allegedly attempted to present him, or have been in the circle that has attempted to present him, with certain intelligence that they said he doesn’t want it. He said he doesn’t want it or he won’t read it, in some instances.”

In 2012, U.S. intelligence agencies produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate, which said that al Qaeda no longer posed a direct threat to the U.S. homeland. That assessment, which is supposed to represent the consensus view of all intelligence agencies, was in keeping with the Obama administration’s argument that the terror network had been dealt a massive blow following the death of Osama bin Laden and sustained efforts by the U.S. to dismantle the group and its affiliates.

But, as The Daily Beast previously reported, some officials, most notably then-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Flynn, argued against that reassessment, and had the judgment about al Qaeda no longer posing a direct homeland threat struck from the document.

“Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast in 2014. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’”

The analysts now calling foul on doctored ISIS reports have also noted the past experience with al Qaeda assessments in the complaint to the inspector general, said two sources familiar with its contents.

One of those people said that while the al Qaeda history is not a front-and-center issue, it’s part of the background material that goes to support the analysts’ broader argument that some intelligence leaders are hostile to analysis that runs counter to the White House’s public statements.

As recently as August, Maliki’s office was discussing allowing 8,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to remain until next year, Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said in an interview with The Cable. He told us that there was widespread support in Iraq for such an extension, but the Obama administration was demanding that immunity for U.S. troops be endorsed by the Iraqi Council of Representatives, which was never really possible.

Administration sources and Hill staffers also tell The Cable that the demand that the troop immunity go through the Council of Representatives was a decision made by the State Department lawyers and there were other options available to the administration, such as putting the remaining troops on the embassy’s diplomatic rolls, which would automatically give them immunity.

"An obvious fix for troop immunity is to put them all on the diplomatic list; that’s done by notification to the Iraqi foreign ministry," said one former senior Hill staffer. "If State says that this requires a treaty or a specific agreement by the Iraqi parliament as opposed to a statement by the Iraqi foreign ministry, it has its head up its ass."

The main Iraqi opposition party Iraqiya, led by former U.S. ally and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, decided to tie that vote to two non-related issues. It said they would not vote for the troop extension unless Maliki agreed give them control of a high-level policy council and let them choose the minister of defense from their ranks. Maliki wasn’t about to do either.

"It was clear from the beginning that Maliki wasn’t going to make a move without the support of the other parties behind him," Sullivan explained, adding that the Obama administration focused on Maliki and neglected other actors, such as Allawi. "There was a misunderstanding of how negotiations were unfolding in Iraq. The negotiations got started in earnest far too late."

"The actions don’t match the words here," said Sullivan. "It’s in the administration’s interest to make this look not like they failed to reach an agreement and that they fulfilled a campaign promise. But it was very clear that Panetta and [former Defense Secretary Robert] Gates wanted an agreement."

So what’s the consequence of the failed negotiations? One consequence could be a security vacuum in Iraq that will be filled by Iran.

. . . Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), in his own Friday statement, backed up the administration’s argument that the lack of a troop extension was in the best interest of the United States and Iraq.

said one former senior Hill staffer.

Austin Long, a Columbia University international and public affairs professor, said al-Maliki allegedly supported the residual force and may have signed a new plan, but the Iraqi parliament would not.
Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said a recent Iraqi delegation to the institute agreed the terms of the planned renewal could not have passed parliament.

"They said that the Iraqi government was too weak, and unwilling to go against the wishes of those Iraqis who wanted the Americans to leave," Preble said.

danivon wrote:Apart from the DF/Ricky banter spiralling into nothingness, can we address the elephant in the room when it comes to ISIS?

Assad.

What we can do regarding ISIS in Syria depends on what our position is on Assad. We have so far been opposing him (and helping the rebels, as have Turkey and Arab states).

On the other hand, Iran and Russia are helping him.

Do we:

a) Continue to oppose Assad by proxy and try to take on ISIS from the Iraq/Kurdistan/Jordan side while not working with him and his allies, and continuing to support the non-ISIS and non-AQ rebels

b) Work with Assad or his allies to concentrate on ISIS

c) Something in between

Now that Turkey has shot down a Russian plane, things are very tense. It would be stupid for us (the UK) or you (the USA) to escalate action in Syria without a clear direction in terms of Assad, because I suspect option (a) means risking interference and being less effective. Unless there is a cunning plan.

Boko Haram are in a way a lot easier to take on, as are the group in Mali who attacked Bamako, because there is a simple dimension to the conflict - we should be supporting Mali and Nigeria to quell them. But in other places it gets more complex - do we intervene in the CAR? Do we change our stance in Yemen?

danivon wrote:Apart from the DF/Ricky banter spiralling into nothingness, can we address the elephant in the room when it comes to ISIS?

Assad.

What we can do regarding ISIS in Syria depends on what our position is on Assad. We have so far been opposing him (and helping the rebels, as have Turkey and Arab states).

On the other hand, Iran and Russia are helping him.

Do we:

a) Continue to oppose Assad by proxy and try to take on ISIS from the Iraq/Kurdistan/Jordan side while not working with him and his allies, and continuing to support the non-ISIS and non-AQ rebels

b) Work with Assad or his allies to concentrate on ISIS

c) Something in between

Now that Turkey has shot down a Russian plane, things are very tense. It would be stupid for us (the UK) or you (the USA) to escalate action in Syria without a clear direction in terms of Assad, because I suspect option (a) means risking interference and being less effective. Unless there is a cunning plan.

Boko Haram are in a way a lot easier to take on, as are the group in Mali who attacked Bamako, because there is a simple dimension to the conflict - we should be supporting Mali and Nigeria to quell them. But in other places it gets more complex - do we intervene in the CAR? Do we change our stance in Yemen?

rickyp wrote:From quoted article (Which i appreciate)

This is the source that says there was an option to an agreement on immunity..

said one former senior Hill staffer.

.
Sounds a lot like one of Trumps (sic) sources.

Its (sic) also pretty clear from the story that Maliki didn't have the political clout to make a SOFA happen against the wishes of an entrenched parliament.

backed up here:

Austin Long, a Columbia University international and public affairs professor, said al-Maliki allegedly supported the residual force and may have signed a new plan, but the Iraqi parliament would not.
Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said a recent Iraqi delegation to the institute agreed the terms of the planned renewal could not have passed parliament.

"They said that the Iraqi government was too weak, and unwilling to go against the wishes of those Iraqis who wanted the Americans to leave," Preble said.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... -troops-i/

Austin Long, a Columbia University international and public affairs professor, said al-Maliki allegedly supported the residual force and may have signed a new plan, but the Iraqi parliament would not. Facing the prospect of a weak agreement that didn’t protect remaining troops the way the United States wanted, when neither Baghdad nor Washington wanted to leave them there, negotiations broke down. No new agreement was reached, and no residual force was formed. There has been plenty of debate whether it was Washington or Baghdad that was more intractable on a new agreement.

During a tough campaign week focused on the Iraq War, former Gov. Jeb Bush shifted blame for problems there to President Barack Obama, saying that Obama’s actions helped hand the country over to Islamic State.

A University of Nevada student attending a town hall-style meeting in Reno asked Bush why he was placing the burden on Obama, at one point telling Bush, "Your brother created ISIS." Bush countered that the Obama administration hadn’t followed through on proper planning.

"We had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, that could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress," Bush said. (Watch video of the exchange above.)

BAGHDAD — President Obama’s announcement on Friday that all American troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year was an occasion for celebration for many, but some top American military officials were dismayed by the announcement, seeing it as the president’s putting the best face on a breakdown in tortured negotiations with the Iraqis.

And for the negotiators who labored all year to avoid that outcome, it represented the triumph of politics over the reality of Iraq’s fragile security’s requiring some troops to stay, a fact everyone had assumed would prevail. But officials also held out hope that after the withdrawal, the two countries could restart negotiations more productively, as two sovereign nations.

This year, American military officials had said they wanted a “residual” force of as many as tens of thousands of American troops to remain in Iraq past 2011 as an insurance policy against any violence. Those numbers were scaled back, but the expectation was that at least about 3,000 to 5,000 American troops would remain.

Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national-security adviser, told me that Obama believes a full withdrawal was the right decision. “There is a risk of overstating the difference that American troops could make in the internal politics of Iraq,” he said. “Having troops there did not allow us to dictate sectarian alliances. Iraqis are going to respond to their own political imperatives.” But U.S. diplomats and commanders argue that they played a crucial role, acting as interlocutors among the factions—and curtailing Maliki’s sectarian tendencies.

“We used to restrain Maliki all the time,” Lieutenant General Michael Barbero, the deputy commander in Iraq until January, 2011, told me. “If Maliki was getting ready to send tanks to confront the Kurds, we would tell him and his officials, ‘We will physically block you from moving if you try to do that.’ ” Barbero was angry at the White House for not pushing harder for an agreement. “You just had this policy vacuum and this apathy,” he said. “Now we have no leverage in Iraq. Without any troops there, we’re just another group of guys.” There is no longer anyone who can serve as a referee, he said, adding, “Everything that has happened there was not just predictable—we predicted it.”

Indeed, months before the election, American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its combination of support and indifference, was encouraging Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies. “We thought we were creating a dictator,” one person who signed the memo told me.

Sure, because Trump often cites foreignpolicy.com. Meanwhile, you spared no effort. I mean, wow, politifact! That's like a first-hand source

rickyp wrote:Fate

Sure, because Trump often cites foreignpolicy.com. Meanwhile, you spared no effort. I mean, wow, politifact! That's like a first-hand source

Let me explain why this matters.
Like Trump, foreign policy has used unnamed sources.

And even then they offered an opinion from their "source" about a potential solution, which foreign policy never bothered to vet as to its plausibility. (i.e. Military assigned to a diplomatic post generally have to be at the embassey or consulates. Each country has rules about the access these forces might have to weaponary for example. When the US Embassey was taken in Iran the Marine guards did not have live ammunition.)
I read Foreign Policy, and like it. But its fallen down here on its standards.

Washington has secured “acceptable assurances” from Iraqi authorities shielding US Special Forces from local law. The deal comes as US forces are set to begin advising the embattled Iraqi army as Sunni militants continue their surge across the country.

The Defense Department has yet to receive in writing immunity agreements for the troops, but "Iraq has provided acceptable assurances" for the 300 Special Forces troops President Barack Obama announced he would send to Iraq on Thursday, John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.

“Many of you have asked today about the status of legal protections for the small number of military advisors that will be working inside Iraq,” Kirby said.

“I can confirm for you that Iraq has provided acceptable assurances on the issue of protections for these personnel via the exchange of diplomatic note. Specifically, Iraq has committed itself to providing protections for our personnel equivalent to those provided to personnel who were in country before the crisis. We believe these protections are adequate to the short-term assessment and advisory mission our troops will be performing in Iraq. With this agreement, we will be able to start establishing the first few assessment teams."

The agreement, which came via “diplomatic note,” will see US advisors subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and not Iraqi law.

Politifact used named sources and they explained their reasons for their statements. It is possible for a third party to confirm that Politfact is quoting accurately.

It is not possible to check on the validity of Foreign Policies quotation. we don't know who it was. It could be made up.

Ray Jay wrote:It's a good question ... I think option A makes sense. ISIS is worse in terms of ideology and intent, but my understanding is that Assad has killed about 200,000 people, a multiple of what ISIS has done. Using chemical weapons and bombing your own civilians is horrific.