Breaking: Boots to be put on the ground in Iraq (AP)

[JRP1994]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/obama-275-us-forces-deploying-iraq

[Oakvale]

About time.

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Pretty lame though. Bring out the drones.

[JerryArkansas]

This is the wrong decision.  We have wasted too much blood and treasure there.  Just let the country fall.  Nothing we can do here.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The last time I can think of troops being deployed to protect an embassy was in another country experiencing civil war after their long time dictator was overthrown….well, it didn’t end too well...

[Oakvale]

The last time I can think of troops being deployed to protect an embassy was in another country experiencing civil war after their long time dictator was overthrown….well, it didn’t end too well...

Troops were protecting the (diplomatic mission, not an embassy) in Benghazi? I agree though, I'm sure zero security presence would have definitely prevented the attacks.

Smart take.

[Indy Texas]

This is the wrong decision.  We have wasted too much blood and treasure there.  Just let the country fall.  Nothing we can do here.

They need to ensure all US civilian personnel in Baghdad can leave the country safely. Then we pull the ladder up with us, turn the lights off, lock the door and let what happens happen.

Are there any Americans still delusional enough to believe this is preferable to if we had just left Saddam in power?

[Flake]

Wonderful news

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

oh god

[Oakvale]

We need a Saddam Hussein Blingee to complement the Milosevic one for every smug apologist for tyrants who revel in any level of violence and carnage provided they can use it to prove a fuzzy political point. There's a disturbing trend where people fetishise murderous dictators based on some hyper-bourgeois notion of "stability".

[Badger]

Please people. It's a contingent of less than 300 soliders to protect the embassy. Please don't act like this is the start of Iraq War III.

[ElectionsGuy]

Very stupid decision.

[JerryArkansas]

This is the wrong decision.  We have wasted too much blood and treasure there.  Just let the country fall.  Nothing we can do here.

They need to ensure all US civilian personnel in Baghdad can leave the country safely. Then we pull the ladder up with us, turn the lights off, lock the door and let what happens happen.

Are there any Americans still delusional enough to believe this is preferable to if we had just left Saddam in power?

OK, get them all out, then f**k Iraq.  Let them drop dead for all I care.  We wasted 1.4 trillion dollars there, no need to waste any more.  I wish we had just left Saddam in power.  Atleast we would know what we got and he would have lost power in 2010 anyways.  I just don't care about this county and region anymore.  We just need to pull out of this region and let the chips fall.

[Indy Texas]

We need a Saddam Hussein Blingee to complement the Milosevic one for every smug apologist for tyrants who revel in any level of violence and carnage provided they can use it to prove a fuzzy political point. There's a disturbing trend where people fetishise murderous dictators based on some hyper-bourgeois notion of "stability".

Saddam Hussein killed a bunch of Iraqis. Now Islamist terrorists are killing a bunch of Iraqis.

We spent billions of dollars to remove Saddam Hussein from power so that Iraqis could be tortured and killed by someone other than Saddam Hussein.

We weren't "welcomed as liberators." There is no latent liberal democratic tendency in the Iraqi people that just needed to be awakened by some 'Murican nation building. The only choices in the Middle East are who you'd rather be oppressed by.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein didn't have roadside bombs blowing up indiscriminately. It didn't have radical mullahs forcing women into hijab. The lights were on and the water was running. If you pissed off Saddam, you got tortured and killed.

This is the alternative: bombs blowing up indiscriminately, Sharia law, and a total breakdown in public services. And if you piss off Maliki/ISIS/etc, you get tortured and killed by Maliki/ISIS/etc.

If you seriously think the latter is somehow preferable to the former and that we were right to spend our own blood and treasure to bring that about, then you are, with all due respect, an idiot and a naif.

[free my dawg]

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The last time I can think of troops being deployed to protect an embassy was in another country experiencing civil war after their long time dictator was overthrown….well, it didn’t end too well...

Troops were protecting the (diplomatic mission, not an embassy) in Benghazi? I agree though, I'm sure zero security presence would have definitely prevented the attacks.

Smart take.

I was under the impression that the mission in Benghazi was our embassy as we had yet to establish a functioning one in Tripoli. And I'm not making a point about Benghazi as much as a point that sending troops to Baghdad is an invitation for ISIS to try and create a Benghazi like attack on our embassy, which is bigger than the Vatican and contains the former Republican Palace.

We should be completely evacuating our embassy, not reinforcing it.

We need a Saddam Hussein Blingee to complement the Milosevic one for every smug apologist for tyrants who revel in any level of violence and carnage provided they can use it to prove a fuzzy political point. There's a disturbing trend where people fetishise murderous dictators based on some hyper-bourgeois notion of "stability".

Saddam Hussein killed a bunch of Iraqis. Now Islamist terrorists are killing a bunch of Iraqis.

We spent billions of dollars to remove Saddam Hussein from power so that Iraqis could be tortured and killed by someone other than Saddam Hussein.

We weren't "welcomed as liberators." There is no latent liberal democratic tendency in the Iraqi people that just needed to be awakened by some 'Murican nation building. The only choices in the Middle East are who you'd rather be oppressed by.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein didn't have roadside bombs blowing up indiscriminately. It didn't have radical mullahs forcing women into hijab. The lights were on and the water was running. If you pissed off Saddam, you got tortured and killed.

This is the alternative: bombs blowing up indiscriminately, Sharia law, and a total breakdown in public services. And if you piss off Maliki/ISIS/etc, you get tortured and killed by Maliki/ISIS/etc.

If you seriously think the latter is somehow preferable to the former and that we were right to spend our own blood and treasure to bring that about, then you are, with all due respect, an idiot and a naif.

It would also likely have contained Iran a bit more. Now they have free reign in the region.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Though ISIS are clearly brutal reactionary fundamentalists, it would on balance be better if they at least brought down the Iraqi government. It would kill any credibility that The Empire still had in the Middle East, spike up gas prices to force us to look at alternative and domestic energy (and therefore end the biggest reason for the American meddling in that corner of the world), and help split the US-Gulf monarchies regional axis.

[Flake]

Though ISIS are clearly brutal reactionary fundamentalists, it would on balance be better if they at least brought down the Iraqi government. It would kill any credibility that The Empire still had in the Middle East, spike up gas prices to force us to look at alternative and domestic energy (and therefore end the biggest reason for the American meddling in that corner of the world), and help split the US-Gulf monarchies regional axis.

[All Along The Watchtower]

You mean to tell me that the US government is sending hundreds (!) of troops to protect....members of the US government stationed in Iraq from an escalation of violence in the country?

Meh...

[Indy Texas]

It would also likely have contained Iran a bit more. Now they have free reign in the region.

Saddam was completely impotent after the late '90s. He had no wherewithal to deal with Iran, but at least he wouldn't have turned Iraq into an Iranian client state, which is basically what Maliki has done.

From a strategic standpoint, you could argue it's preferable for ISIS to cripple the Iraqi government because it will create a chink in the uninterrupted sphere of influence Iran has stretching from Lebanon on the Mediterranean to its own eastern border with Afghanistan.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Good.

[Yank2133]

You mean to tell me that the US government is sending hundreds (!) of troops to protect....members of the US government stationed in Iraq from an escalation of violence in the country?

Meh...

Yeah, you would think more people would be on board after the Benghazi fiasco......

[angus]

Thanks, Obama.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

We need to send in troops to help defend Baghdad. If we don't, Iraq will either become a full Iranian puppet or Al-Qaeda-stan.
While this would be bad, it may be that the best way to preserve peace in the middle east would be to organize population transfers were Iraq's Shia go to Syria and Syria's Sunni go to Iraq. This way there would be a sunni buffer against Iran and there would be no more intra-national sectarian conflict in those two nations.

[King]

Embassy defense is important unless you want another 1979.

[badgate]

Very stupid decision.

I agree, we should leave our embassy undefended.