Posted on 06/15/2014 6:31:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The advance of Islamic militants across Iraq has brought fresh criticism for the Obama administration — but may also deliver a grim measure of vindication to one very prominent White House official: Vice President Joe Biden.
In recent months, former officials and pundits questioned and even ridiculed Biden’s foreign policy acumen.
Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates wrote in his memoir that Biden “was wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue of the past four decades.” And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new book “Hard Choices” notes that Biden “remained skeptical” about launching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 — and that others in the administration were at odds with Biden. “I thought we should go for it,” Clinton states, a contrast she has also drawn attention to on the road since leaving office.
This week paints Biden’s judgment in a far different light.
Recent events in Iraq call attention to his prediction nearly a decade ago that the war-torn nation was heading towards a break-up along sectarian lines — and to a prescription he offered to try to manage that reality by granting Sunnis, Shia and Kurds greater autonomy over various parts of the country.
In other words: while Biden may have taken a beating repeatedly in recent years for some foreign policy calls he’s made, his judgment on Iraq’s capacity to stay united now looks almost prescient.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Arabs ... Kurds ... Turks ... Persians
Sunni ... Shia ... Christans ... JOOOs
There’s enough divisions there for endless lifetimes of strife...
Incredible video. I thought the one Isis wannabe in a blue shirt was going to get smashed by a truck while cheering for his serial killers.
So Carter had even met the man and family. Wouldn’t you know it. He was soon to betray each of them.
What a man...
The good Christian even refused the Shah an entrance visa to obtain treatment for cancer.
Looks like the Shah even then had Carter’s number.
One of the great chuckles was the idea that Iraq was such a threat we had to invade it to make US safe.
If one was to take the WOT logically and believe in such threats, one would have sealed the border from any such threats. The fact that we didn't militarize the border, nor were we concerned with any threat of people coming here to kill US leaves the WOT with the rest of the BS put out by our dear leaders.
Throw in the fact, that we actually have threats here with trans border criminals that rape, kill, rob, and hurt more Americans and legal residents than Al-Qaeda has ever dreamed of.
If Joe Biden is considered to be right about something, it means only one thing. We need to reconsider our former opinion.
The reason it was a bad idea at the time was because it would have created coalitions that would threaten to divide Turkey and Syria.
No, Joe was not right.
Iraq is being divided right now......as the ISIL in the North attacks the Malaki Iraq in the south.
How would division end up any different ? East Iraq attacking the West Iraq ?
This was because of oil revenue. Most of the oil is in the Shia south and the Kurdish north and the Sunnis don't have much.
If the country were partitioned, the oil revenue would also be partitioned, leading to endless war over the oil money.
The US insisted on and the Iraq Constitution contains the oil revenue sharing language.
But problems arose quickly. In 2007 Hunt Oil Company announced that they would deal direct with the Kurds. Other companies also announced but they were all small companies and the oil still had to be shipped south to the Persian Gulf allowing the Iraq central govt to collect the revenue and distribute that revenue according to the Constitution.
To deal with this problem, the Iraqi Central govt developed a policy that said any oil company that dealt directly with the Kurds could not participate in any other oil project within Iraq.
But then the problem got worse.
In 2012, Exxon announced that they would deal direct with the Kurds. Conoco and Total soon followed with their announcement. Exxon had bid on and been awarded 50% of the huge Quarna field with a Chinese company holding the other half. So Iraq told Exxon that if they were going to deal direct with the Kurds, they would have to divest their holdings in the Quarna field. Exxon began divesting, although they still hold about 10%.
But then the problem got worse.
The pipeline connecting Kurdish Iraq, thru Turkey, to the Mediterranean was completed. This allows the Kurdish oil onto the world market without the shared revenue being deducted. The Kurds could keep all of the revenue.
If this happens, eventually the Shia will also stop sharing the revenue from the oil produced in the south.
The Sunni, deprived of the shared revenue, will use military force to get their share.
Who says that Politico is correct? They are just as daft as Biden.
Iraq can have territories of various religious sects and that will NOT affect any oil revenue. Alaska sends each citizen a check for their part in the revenue...that would have worked if our government had pressed for it....when we occupied Iraq. Of course it won’t work now, as we have NO part in the decisions to create a democratic Iraq but considering we opted to get their elections up and running before ironing out the details, it wasn’t a good idea not to make consideration for that, and we would have had individual support if they were getting paid as citizens, then we could have gotten some repayment of our costs to help them by brokering the deal.
Now, a single Iraq would still exist, no one is suggesting otherwise...having had safe territories that were patrolled by their own security would have stopedp some of the sectarian violence...
Territories of Sunni populations and Territories of Shiites, Kurds, etc would also have promoted businesses due to a safer environment to invest time and money with their security keeping out Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
With any opposing factors there can be intermittent violent acts, but it wouldn’t have been the barbaric warmongers running around like mongrels. we see with ISIS..each group would protect their own people.
There could have been jobs, royalty checks on the oil, and a chance to give their children a better life. Not probable now for sure....that ship sailed when we pulled out in 2011.
The era of political ideology is giving way to old school religious and ethnic strife.
Excellent points and observations - Right on the money, particularly about our wide open borders for the criminals and islamists to come thru and commence their reign of terror all over our country. This is all about Chaos and destabilization of America in the end. We are what stands in the way of the Globalists’ “restructuring.”
Where do you think Putin figures into all of this? There is no such thing as a permanent Power vacuum. Take America down, and see what pops in our place after a few decades of mayhem. Is he in this game as a NWO team player or is he doing his own thing for his own country’s gain?
There are Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomens, Chaldean Christians and on and on living in the area, but there is no such thing as an "Iraqi."
Only a blithering idiot could have seriously entertained the notion that a bunch of Muslims with their many ethnic and clan and ideological divisions could ever hope to establish and maintain the sort of civil society institutions upon which Western democratic freedoms stand.
Only a willfully blind fool could ever have imagined that Islam is in any way compatible with democracy. Islam is to its core inimical to democracy, science, progress.
But our last two drooling idiots in the Oval Office insisted that Islam is a "religion of peace". Who could actually believe that crap? You really have to have been educated at an Ivy League school like W. and Bambi to be capable of the conscious self-deception such a patent lie requires.
Going into Iraq was probably the greatest blunder in the history of our foreign policy. It was obvious to any rational person in 2003 that Saddam, stinker that he was, served the important purpose of keeping a lid on the Brit-created pressure cooker they call "Iraq." It was obvious that he had nothing to do with 911. So they made up the whole WMD lie. Nice going, scumbags. You spent a few trillion bucks that we don't have and got a bunch of our people killed or wounded. For nothing.
That's why I have equal loathing for both Rats and Rinos. Fools and villains, all of them.
Putin would rather have Obama's job. He would love to have the US dollar, printing press, and military.
The Russian strategic plan is to encircle and then greatly reduce Turkey. This current unrest opens up whole new avenues to Putin.
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