141.8 - Clown Award: John McCain and Lindsey Graham

Clown Award: John McCain and Lindsey Graham

And talking about Iraq leads us straight to the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

This time around, it's a joint award: The winner of the big red nose this week is the right-wing's favorite foreign policy bromance, that darling duo of doofuses, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

At a press conference last week, the two tried to blame the fighting in Anbar on - well, I don't have to tell you, do I - they wanted to blame it on Barack Obama.

Why? Because he withdrew US forces from Iraq on schedule in 2011. That withdrawal created a "vacuum" that is being "filled by America's enemies" creating "a threat to US national security interests." The White House said that the US is sending weapons to Iraq, but the pair suggested that's not enough, that the US should do a lot more.

Now, remember first that the withdrawal was based on an agreement reached between Iraq and the Bush administration in the fall of 2008, before Obama was even elected, and that, as I commented at the time, the Obama administration did everything it could to pressure the Iraqis to let some troops stay.

Let's remember next that there was no al-Qaeda presence in Iraq - not even the "affiliate" form of ISIS - before the US invasion, which our clowns both supported. We didn't prevent the existence of al-Qaeda in Iraq, we created it.

Then let's remember that during the time there were US troops in Iraq, Sunni fundamentalists controlled parts of Falluja on three separate occasions, twice in 2004 and once in 2007-2008. If we couldn't prevent that when we had 140,000 troops in the country, what makes them think we could do that now with the maybe 10-20,000 that would have stayed?

But, who cares? History is for wimps, not real men like Lindjohn.

But here's the real reason they get the award this week: At that same presser, they also slammed the administration's handling of the civil war in Syria, saying, as they have in the past, that the US should do more to assist the insurgents. In the past, they have even advocated direct US military action.

Well, one of the strongest rebel groups in Syria, one of the strongest among the rebels that Lindjohn would have in power in Damascus, is the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria: ISIS, the exact same fundamentalist Muslim group that they say is creating "a threat to US national security interests" by being in control of parts of Falluja. They want the US to "get involved" more with Iraq to fight the same people they want to send US forces to support in Syria.

Truly, truly, these guys are champion-level clowns.

Sources:
http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/lindsey-graham-falluja.html
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/04/mccain-and-graham-slam-obama-for-iraq-violence/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/06/wars-and-not-rumors-of-wars.html