Megyn Kelly was a vision of scripted outrage last night as she parroted Bob Woodward’s take on Bob Gates’ forthcoming memoir about the Obama administration's foreign policy and went on to point blame at President Obama for the current problems in Iraq. One person she never considered responsible? President George W. Bush, who started the mess in the first place.
Kelly would have you believe Bush's war in Iraq was a big success - ruined by Obama
In 2006, while Bush was still president, a National Intelligence Estimate found that the war in Iraq increased Islamic radicalism and worsened the terror threat to the United States. Last March, the New York Times looked back on the 10 years in Iraq since Bush invaded with promises of fighting terrorism and bringing a model of democracy that would serve as a beacon for the rest of the Middle East. The paper reported, “The most depressing measure of the failure may lie in the voices of ordinary Iraqis who tell reporters that they wish Iraq could return to the way it was under Saddam, for all its miseries.”
But in her lapdog interview with Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq, Kelly seemed determined to help him blame President Obama for all the problems. Starting with Gates, she “asked”:
Do you see something extraordinary in the Commander-in-Chief, according to Mr. Gates, being skeptical, if not outright convinced that that strategy he was sending men like you into fight, would fail?
Kelly made it sound as though President Obama had deliberately sent soldiers into a losing battle but what the book really said, according to the New York Times, is that “President Obama eventually lost faith in the strategy.” Meaning, of course, that he originally believed in it. The Times says, “(H)is doubts (were) fed by White House advisers who continually brought him negative news reports suggesting it was failing, according to his former defense secretary Robert M. Gates.”
Predictably, though, Hunter grabbed the political football Kelly had just handed to him and ran with it.
No, I’m not surprised. And what you see here, what I see here, is a political squandering of military victories. And an abandonment by this administration of everything that we did in Iraq, in Fallujah, Ramadi, Basra, Baghdad, all these different places where we fought, where we killed terrorists, where we set the people free, where we got the people on our side…
…(President Obama’s) abandonment of Iraq led directly to Al Qaeda taking over what the Marines and the Army had cleared and what we had set up and what we had helped with the Iraqis. The president, by failing to get a status of forces agreement… for probably purely political reasons, I think, he abandoned it and here’s what we have. …Al Qaeda now controls what we had fought so hard to free.
Kelly did not point out that the sticking point for staying in Iraq was immunity for American soldiers. Without the status of forces agreement, American soldiers faced prosecutions in Iraqi courts. Nor did she ask Hunter how Obama was supposed to accomplish what the Iraqi Parliament was adamantly against. She also failed to ask whether Hunter thought Obama should have kept troops there despite the risk to their safety and freedom.
Kelly did note that Americans wanted out of Iraq and that President Obama got us out. But not before she asked this question obviously designed to make Obama look bad – and elicit further comments from Hunter to make him look worse.
I know that a lot of veterans who fought in Iraq… are wondering tonight, because it’s been reported now, what did we fight for? What did we lose our comrades for if now we leave and Al Qaeda! (Kelly made her voice melodramatic) Al Qaeda! Is flying its flags atop these cities.
Sure enough, Hunter replied as expected:
We won in Iraq… We had won the war by 2010. This president left for purely political reasons. If we had left 10 or 20,000 troops there, like we have every other war zone that we’ve been involved in except for Viet Nam, …this would not be happening whatsoever. So what this president did was abandon everything that we’ve fought for.
…This president has not only abandoned Iraq, he’s abandoned the Middle East, Megyn. He’s out of everywhere. This is a juvenile foreign policy president when it comes to hard-nose foreign policy in the Middle East, this administration are like little children. And so what we have then is… nothing to show for (our efforts). …Not because we didn’t win but purely political reasons.
I don’t know about you but I think stepped up attacks in Yemen and striking a deal with Iran over its nuclear program doesn’t sound to me like any kind of juvenile abandonment of the region.
Oh, and one other thing: AP reports today that the Pentagon has “expedite(d) the delivery of 10 Scan Eagle drones and 100 Hellfire missiles, which are expected to arrive in Iraq this spring.”
But if Kelly knew about that, she didn’t say a word.
“Obama’s War”
“Bush Kept US Safe”
Really, Dunk?
‘Ol Duck’n Cover should ask bin Laden, Khaddafi, and KSM about President Obama’s “juvenile Middle East foreign policy” . . .
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There you go, Ellen; fixed the headline for ya. :)
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