nuri al maliki ran for office saying there would be no u.s. troops unless they were under iraqi law. we are going around in circles. nuri al maliki a great excuse for the president to do something! nuri al maliki is by all accounts the problem. as soon as u.s. troops left iraq in 2011 you ve had five years to deal with it! i was on the border of the kuwaiti/iraqi border and my point let me finish the question. when u.s. forces left within 24 hours, he was rounding up sunni opponents and threatening to put the vice president on trial. why was the u.s. not able, with all of the weaponry and support it s given the iraqis, why was it not able to put their hand on nuri al maliki and said be inclusive the way you promised? look what happened because he did the opposite. because we stupidly lost the
your hand. mark, many politicians are being saying, i ve been hearing this, you know, for weeks now. obama should have left troops there on the ground. but the reality is he couldn t under the agreement that was brokered by bush and the iraqi insistence that u.s. forces be subject to iraqi law. that was never going to happen. so what is the u.s. do? no residual force there? no real influence? there is still considerable influence for no other reason but they have the threat of air strikes and boots on the ground and arming rebel groups, particularly shiite insurgent groups so we have all sorts of options here. you re right. the u.s. has some of its political hands tied because of the bush agreement and the obama agreement subsequently. but i think that s not the worse situation imaginable because we don t want to be there. we want to withdraw and iraq at that time reins itself. i am of the believe if we stand firm on this and don t bail them out with air strikes which ben
subject to iraqi law and potentially end up getting charged under iraqi law. that was never going to fly. negotiate a status of a forces agreement starts with that position. it is hard work to negotiate that agreement and this administration chose to cater to the radical left in his party and the democratic party, used maliki s initial resistance to what should be in that agreement as an excuse to get the troops out. it wasn t an initial resistance. it was resistance that went on and on. he ran for office on a platform of having life is hard, my friend! and the president gets the big bucks for doing the right things! the right thing would have been to what was the president ments to do? to keep our troops there with a status of forces agreement in place! but he chose not to because he found it convenient to cater to the left side of the party that wanted troops out of there any way. i was there at the time.
teleconference at the pentagon. what a strange, strange scenario here. but what you have said, keith, is that if you can find justice forethe death of your son, that will be a victory for the iraqi people and the iraqi justice system. what do you mean by that? yes. well, i know for me we went there and everybody should have the same right to go to work, eat supper, play with your kid and go to bed and get up and do the same thing every day without worrying about somebody coming in and killing you. when they could come in and kill you they will be held accountable. if this helps iraqi people to be able to do that, for me, all of our guys has died will not be in vain, especially for matt and me. bill: are you pleased you went and did this. absolutely. i never knew what would happen up there but by iraqi law, bill, somebody killed matt. somebody from matt s family must
and that includes recognizing not just when to begin wars but how to end them. today there are no americans fighting in iraq and we are proud of all the americans who served there. as a veteran we need a plan from romney. what do you think of what he said? i like the comment considering i was there last year. it s a real debate on the ground. it s true that governor romney has bush supporters and bush foreign policy members in his campaign. he was unsupportive of us getting out of iraq despite the fact we didn t have diplomat immuni immunity. that didn t enjoy diplomatic immunity. could have been tried by iraqi courts. i think the president has a right to hammer governor romney on that. do we really want to see american troops being prosecuted by iraqis? subject to iraqi law?