“It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio, quoted by Business Insider, on his vision for Iraq.
“It’s not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio, quoted by Business Insider, on his vision for Iraq.
President Obama, “under growing pressure after a setback in the war against Islamic State, is poised to accelerate the training and equipping of Sunni tribal fighters so they can try to reverse the extremists’ recent gains,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Obama met with top national-security advisers “in the aftermath of a humiliating defeat of Iraqi security forces in the city of Ramadi… U.S. officials initially played down the importance of the takeover of Ramadi, 70 miles northwest of Baghdad in Iraq’s largest province. But the battle exposed crucial weaknesses within the Iraqi military, which is at the heart of the American strategy, and prompted the White House to acknowledge a setback.”
“After a week of painfully struggling to talk about the war in Iraq started by his brother,” Jeb Bush (R) said definitively “that he would not have invaded that country based on the intelligence failures that now are known,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Bush: “Knowing what we now know, I would not have engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq.”
“Bush said the lives of U.S. armed forces were not lost in vain -– ‘their sacrifice was worth honoring, not depreciating’ — but that given the intelligence failures that have since been established, he would not have led the country into war in Iraq.”
National Journal: Bush’s four different answers to the same Iraq question
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As Jeb Bush continues to struggle with whether he would have made the same decision as his brother did to invade Iraq, his likely rivals for the GOP presidential nomination are much clearer.
Sen. Ted Cruz to The Hill: “Knowing what we know now, of course we wouldn’t go into Iraq.”
Gov. John Kasich to the Columbus Dispatch: “If the question is, if there were not weapons of mass destruction should we have gone, the answer would’ve been no.”
Gov. Chris Christie to CNN: “I don’t think you can honestly say that if we knew then that there was no WMD that the country should have gone to war.”
Jeb Bush says he would have invaded Iraq, as his brother did in 2003, but told Fox News that mistakes were made, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Said Bush: “I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”
It’s not clear why former New York Times reporter Judith Miller decided it would be a good idea to defend her reporting on the Iraq War on the Daily Show.
Here’s how Stewart opened the interview: “My feeling has always been… I believe that you helped the administration take us to, like, the most devastating mistake in foreign policy that we’ve made in, like, 100 years.”
A new Fairleigh Dickinson Public Mind poll found that 31% of Americans think it was “probably” true U.S. troops found an active weapons of mass destruction program after invading Iraq in 2003, while another 11% said it was “definitely” true.
Among just Republicans, 51% think it’s “probably” or “definitely” true.
President Obama “authorized Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday to send up to 1,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the force the United States has built up since June to fight the Islamic State militants who control much of Iraq and Syria,” the Washington Post reports.
“The announcement of a major increase in the force in Iraq deepens U.S. involvement in a messy regional conflict that officials are warning may last for years.”
Wall Street Journal: “The White House plan, which would double the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, sets the stage for a broader foreign policy debate when Congress returns to Washington next week.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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