Iraq Crisis: Obama Says He Won’t "Rule Out Anything".

badasses right?

**** that place, let them kill each other.

@Jebus213: You have such an odd logic for reasoning. One has to prove the presence of something, not the other way around. Unless you can prove that Saddam's regime had Islamist's links, the understanding and image of that regime shall remain extremists-free.

A sad day for freedom from Islamic tyranny. A sad day for American wallets, too. We just wasted hundreds of billions on that country because our President didn't think Iraq needed to be protected.

and you can't prove that it didn't.

Oh so then lets spend billions on staying there?

Better than flushing that money straight down the toilet, which is essentially what we've just done.

Oh give me a break. The money would be flushed either way.

The solution is worse than the problem then (and why would you go after peaceful people in the Middle East that are religious, sure ISIS is bad, but what have the Iraqi Christians and Jews done to deserve people going "Robespierre" on them) Besides, look what happened to Robespierre in the end.

Horse shit. If we had stayed we wouldn't be in this situation.

Pretending for a second that I actually agree with that: How do you suggest we go about getting that money back? ISIS isn't going to pay us back for everything we've spent in Iraq.

Us? Who's us? It's Iraq's problem as far as I'm concerned.

Why the **** would you want to stay anyway? Those people are a lost cause. No more American lives need to be wasted in that shit hole.

I wonder, if the U.S. had kept a residual force in Iraq could we have prevented this. Also if the U.S. had acted earlier could we have stopped them in their tracks before they could have built up such an army?

Some of you have mentioned drone strikes, according to Lt. Col. Ralph Peters ISIS's forces are too large to be effectively dealt with by drones, we would need to use actual planes and we would also need to strike ISIS bases in Syria not just Iraq.

The silver-lining in the cloud is that if ISIS really is marching on Baghdad, they will be exposing themselves to massive casualties and I don't think they will be able to take that city.

Some people have suggested that the U.S. should stay out. What they are neglecting is that the U.S. has a large embassy in Baghdad with many personnel who have yet to be evacuated. Plus ISIS will not stop with Iraq, if Iraq and Syria fall, what country is next? ISIS has said they are planning a "direct confrontation" with the U.S.

Perhaps it is time for the U.S. to do the unthinkable: forge an alliance with Iran and Syria to put ISIS down.

And it's our problem because we put Iraq in the position it's in.

Because having the jihadists in the ME focus on Iraq is far better than having them focus on the continental US.

Still not worth it.

not how coinflips work, now if you said you had a jar and with two items in it and removed both you would know what you did not select the first time, just saying. with vs without replacement in statistics.

a coin flip is always 50/50

That just shows how short-sighted you are.

You gotta wonder how some people commenting here think about things. Do you understand what protecting US interests means? True, Bush shouldn't had invaded Iraq but that is the past, going forward that isn't of much importance to deal with the current situation. Leaving them alone and hoping for the best isn't a solution. After establishing their caliphate ISIS most would set it sights on perpetrating terrorists attacks on US soil.

The current leader of ISIS, the terror group which has been disavowed by Al-Qaeda BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO EXTREME EVEN FOR THEM, is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi which some are calling the next Osama Bin Laden. Do you know what Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said after being release from a US detention camp in Iraq on 2009? "I’ll see you guys in New York".

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/isis-leader-see-you-in-new-york.html

So it would be good, if possible, to nip this in the butt before it gets any worse. Or is this how you behave in your lives? Do you let things get worse and worse until the problem explodes in your face and you only have even worse options to deal with it?

Have the local inhabitants sort it out. I'm tired of Muslims constantly bitching about the US getting into their affairs. Let them kill themselves. Its time they start to own their own actions.

What's the solution then? Troops in Iraq...indefinitely? The Iraqi government certainly won't sign on for that. So given that should we just straight up occupy the country yet again, sovereignty be damned? All the US can do at this point is delay the inevitable, unless of course the west wants to go ahead and re-constitute Saddamism. People need to realize that there are limits to US power.

The truth of the matter is that Iraq as a nation doesn't exist anymore. In truth it probably never actually existed in the first place.

Great example of the sunk-cost fallacy right here

cant we just nuke the whales?

Well if Obama does not want to do it all that is required is to follow legal procedure by asking Congress for permission, and wait for the permission of a group of people who have proven to be incapable of accomplishing anything on their own.

I'm not sure if you're following here. I don't have to prove anything because I did not make any claims of the existence of something. The burden of proof does not lie on he who asserts the absence of something that hasn't been decisively and unequivocally, or at least substantially and conspicuously, proven to exist. Such a burden would lie on he who attempts to diverge from such a status quo and make claims about the existence of that said thing. The perception of Saddam's regime, whether presently or in past times, was and is still of a secular nature. There was nothing suggesting otherwise throughout the course of that regime, and I'm not aware of any recently revealed evidences and clues surfacing up to suggest any different. Why would I need to prove that his regime was predominantly secular while there is nothing to back up the opposite?

What Obama meant is that he'll stop at nothing to give ISIS whatever help it needs.

Not really. Since I'm arguing we should have stayed rather than left. I'm not arguing to put anymore money into it now. NOW it's a lost cause.

I fail to see how it's America's problem.

Staying would've only delayed the inevitable. The Iraq war was lost in 2003 the moment the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi military as well as other vital national infrastructures. Moreover you're acting as if we had any choice in leaving the country; the truth of the matter is that we were kicked out.

No one can destroy the Saudis for as long as America is protecting them... After all, the Saudis own a share of America, and supply them with oil to boot. Much of America's foreign policy in the Middle East is based around protecting Israel and the Arab Gulf states (specifically Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE)... which makes it all the more ironic how Saudis are funding ISIS, yet America isn't allowed to criticize the Saudis for doing so.

Thermopylae doesn't sound like such a myth anymore when you see battles like this happening today. It basically comes down to a small group of hardened veterans willing to die for what they believe in vs. a much larger army who are only working for the food & money and have no interest in dying for a government they don't care about.

I don't know if I agree with that. I think we probably would have been allowed to stay if not for Obama's wishy-washy attitude towards backing up our foreign interests with force.

Who knows what would have happened if Obama had never been elected or if he had been voted out.

Of all the things to blame Obama for, this ranks among the strangest. We have a pretty good idea what would've happened if Obama had never been elected considering how the withdrawal was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. In 2010 John McCain, the man who would've been president had Obama not been elected, publicly stated how we should be crediting Bush for ending the war. The Obama administration tried to negotiate keeping a residual force in Iraq but only if US forces were granted immunity from being prosecuted under Iraqi law. The Iraqi government refused and that was that. What was he suppose to do, hold a gun to Maliki's heads and tell him we stay or else? Even the 2008 withdrawal negotiated in 2008 was controversial among Iraqis because it allowed US troops to stay for another 3 years.

learn from the past, people who think they know geopolitical issues only exacerbate them. the pretense of knowledge applies mostly to government agents, why are people so quick to assume killing people is the way to solve the problems of killing people who are mad that people who they knew were killed?

circular reasoning FTL

unless you are one of THOSE people who thinks the whole middle east would be better off a sheet of glass. there are other issues there.

He is certainly at blame for some things. To say otherwise makes you a partisan fan boy. The President, by nature of his office, makes him responsible for quite a lot.

Actually, we have no idea what would've happened if Obama hadn't been elected. Which is why I'm saying things might have turned out very differently.

Definitely. But how do we secure investments we've already made in certain countries?

How would it have turned out any differently? You aren't saying anything of substance, all you're feeding me is talking points. The Iraqis didn't want us in their country anymore. It had nothing to do Obama. McCain would've been dealt the same hand and would've had to reluctantly agree to a complete US withdrawal. The Iraq government refused to give immunity to US troops. Are you suggesting that Obama should've kept them there anyway and risk having US military personnel face trial in Iraqi courtrooms?

Investments as in subsidiaries or..?