Over the weekend, Iraq lost a city of half a million people to ISIS. The city was the capital of Iraq’s largest province, and Iraq’s military abandoned a large amount of armored vehicles to the ISIS forces.
So it might come as a little bit of a surprise that the White House today, when pressed on the strategy of the ISIS war and how things are going, talked about “tweaks” and insisted that the war is “overall” a success.
The number of people who see it that way is dwindling all the time, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D – CA), a ranking House Democrat, today said the administration’s war rhetoric should be raising “alarm bells.”
“I don’t think we’re losing the war, but I don’t think we’re making tremendous progress either,” Schiff said, adding he wasn’t comfortable with the Pentagon using number of airstrikes as a metric for success in the failing mission.
Ever hawkish Sens. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) and John McCain (R – AZ) aren’t happy either, and they see the solution to the war’s woes as a full-scale ground invasion, insisting the current situation is the lack of a strategy.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz
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The repeated denial of substantial losses to a hardened enemy. The desperate attempts to shore up the negative war image. Exactly the same surreal propaganda during the early U.S. Vietnam years.
Now will Baghdad be be next?
Schiff, doesn't think we're loosing yet. Really? How much worse could it be? Maybe if Baghdad falls Washington will come to grips with their abject failure in Iraq and Syria and disengage before the disaster grows into boots on the ground.
It's sooo hard to admit failure, even for the US Congress who are so familiar with it. It's like JEB who didn't want to admit that invading Iraq was a huge mistake for fear of denigrating all those Americans who died there following Dubya's orders – that their deaths were in vain. Really? They were!!! The major premise that it was worth it to begin with is a lie. The troops were just following orders – bad orders that the people who made them should be in jail for but the troops did what they were asked to do. The fact that the mission was wrong from the beginning is not their fault.
The invasion was wrong and served no good purpose. The American people should not be protected from that truth.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) and John McCain want a full-scale ground invasion? Would they be willing to lead the charge?
Not a friggin' chance…one of them is a failed candidate for President…and the other will be shortly…and they're both too important to get anywhere near the front lines, just ask them.