Leon Panetta: How The White House Misplayed Iraqi Troop Talks

[asterism]

Leon Panetta: How the White House Misplayed Iraqi Troop Talks

As U.S. forces return to Iraq to counter the surging al-Qaeda splinter group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, President Obama’s former Secretary of Defense and CIA chief recalls the White House debates that led to America’s departure from the country. His new book, with Jim Newton, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, from which this article is adapted, will be published on Oct. 7.

Through the fall of 2011, the main question facing the American military in Iraq was what our role would be now that combat operations were over. When President Obama announced the end of our combat mission in August 2010, he acknowledged that we would maintain troops for a while. Now that the deadline was upon us, however, it was clear to me—and many others—that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together.

Leon Panetta How the White House Misplayed Iraqi Troop Talks


When you've lost your own party faithful, you've really lost.

 

[bendog]

From your link:

. The deal never materialized. To this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to deal with al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country.
Over the following two and a half years, the situation in Iraq slowly deteriorated. Al-Maliki was responsible, as he exacerbated the deep sectarian issues polarizing his country

And that illustrates the question. No one, not gates, panetta, nobody, has any answer for how US troops on the ground would prevent al-ah-mucky from exploiting the sectarian divide to benefit the shiaa. Nobody wanted him, but nobody could get rid of him.