Fresh off of President Obama’s announcement that the US is going to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is talking about planned negotiations with the Iraqi government on a new role for troops inside the country.
According to Panetta, once the “reduction of the combat presence” is completed (an interesting choice of words since officials term the troops “non-combat” forces) they will enter into a new round of talks with the Iraqi government on keeping troops for military trainers and “security needs” going forward.
The trainers were presumed to be off the table with the collapse of the current talks, with the Iraqi government refusing to grant US troops blanket immunity for crimes committed in the nation. The Iraqi government insists that since the mission was supposed to be training on base, they wouldn’t need immunity.
Panetta declined to estimate how many troops the Pentagon might end up returning to Iraq in the talks, but pointed to Bahrain’s “security cooperation” deal as an example, where the US has nearly 5,000 troops.
SO the POTUS basically lied just to get the base of his anti-war support to not vote for Ron Paul?
I have to give Obama credit though,lying about something and then directly contradicting what you just lied about in the course of a matter of hours takes balls.BIG balls.
And naturally the POS Mainstream media noticed none of this direct contradiction as usual……
You are assuming that Obama and Panetta are reading from the same script? There have been too many instances where that has not been the case to just assume they are in sync. Not saying which one is lying – maybe both, which is highly likely.
What does Panetta and his merry group of contractors not understand about the word NO? Does he really think the Iraqis want us to stay in those super bases that we built. They seem to be delusional enough to think that the Iraqis love us rather than hating our guts. The neo-con attempts along with our military attempts to stay to protect the Iraqis from the evil Iranians is one more of the grand lies. Our biggest concerns is that the Generals will park our last 45,000 troops in Kuwait, eager to re-invade when our mercenies from State shoot up a crowd of innocent Iraqis.
Panetta don't you know that once you are out your PLUSH EMBASSY in the heart of Bagdad will be nice pickings for the Iraqui's.
Remember Teheran and what happened to the Embassy there?