“We will need to retain some forces in Iraq and the region,” Obama said. “We’ll continue to strike at al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Obama made the point repeatedly: “In ending the war, we must act with more wisdom than we started it,” he said a month earlier. “That is why my plan would maintain sufficient forces in the region to target al-Qaeda within Iraq.”

(Time Magazine)

The quote above was a strong position held by Candidate Obama during the 2007-2008 Democratic Presidential Primary. We now flash forward to 2014, because President Obama now has a golden opportunity to honor that pledge he made while he sought to establish himself as a credible steward of America’s commitments to the world. You see, Al Qaeda is still very much in Iraq and has taken up dominion over the City of Fallujah.

This, of course, sets the stage for President Obama to smite them the way the exterminator lays low the vile cockroach. However, Al Qaeda in Iraq has zero reason to worry about this. Le Duc Tho had more to fear from President Gerald Ford when he assaulted South Vietnam back in 1975. Unlike the victims of Obamacaring back here in the USA, if Al Qaeda likes Fallujah, they can keep it. Time Magazine further describes the developing tergiversation below.

For now, the White House’s game plan involves better arming Maliki to repel al-Qaeda forces from his country. A senior administration official complains to TIME that opposition in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — led by Democratic Chairman Robert Menendez — to giving Maliki advanced weapons like Apache attack helicopters has left Iraq’s security forces unable to meet the terrorist challenge. Menendez has expressed concern that Maliki might use such arms to repress non-al-Qaeda Sunni rivals within his country. “Time and again, the SFRC has blocked the delivery of this support [Apaches],” says the official. “It’s hard to imagine why some members think now is a good time to deny the Iraqi Government the weapons it needs to effectively take the fight to al-Qaeda.”

So just how do I break this to The Boy President gently? I’d hate to see the Presidential bladder leak on national TV. This might work…

“You are the Commander-In-Bleeping-Chief! Sam’s Army does not flipping report to Senator Menendez unless you want it to as an excuse for your own professional cowardice. You order up the Apaches personally, and you can have AQI for breakfast –scattered, covered and chunked.”

Ok, that was accurate, perhaps, but not so gentle. Which also may well describe the contents of Robert Gates’ recent memoir entitled Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. Gates’ accuses Barack Obama of wanting to get out without having any commitment at all to what happened next in Iraq. The money quote states “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

I’ll confess to skepticism regarding the Gates opus magnum. I tend to think the worst of former presidential advisors that turn rat on a president still in office. I remember former Bush Administration lackeys going the expose route and I remember wishing they’d die of intestinal worms. Thus I greeted Gates’ new book with similar antipathetic skepticism.

I just assumed he was in it to afford that yacht he always wanted to putter around the Gulf of Mexico. Current events force me to apologize to Secretary Gates. He was right; Barack Obama wouldn’t lift his leg to urinate on the Iraqi government if it caught fire from Al Qaeda thermite grenade.

The Washington Post reports that Gates felt betrayed by the Administration he worked for. Gates included the following commentary in his memoir.

The first, he says, was Obama’s decision to seek the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays serving in the military. Though Gates says he supported the decision, there had been months and months of debate, with details still to work out. On one day’s notice, Obama informed Gates and Mullen that he would announce his request for a repeal of the law. Obama had “blindsided Admiral Mullen and me,” Gates writes. Similarly, in a battle over defense spending, “I was extremely angry with President Obama,” Gates writes. “I felt he had breached faith with me . . . on the budget numbers.” As with “don’t ask, don’t tell,” “I felt that agreements with the Obama White House were good for only as long as they were politically convenient.”

So Gates felt betrayed by the Obama Administration. He felt he got told that if he liked his budget, he could keep it. The Iraqis can empathize, for as long as they remain warmer than room temperature. Jim Geraghty nailed Barack Obama’s sense of loyalty to perfection when he described every one of Barack Obama’s promises come with an expiration date. The man has the consistency of a Will-O-the-Wisp and will likewise leave those dependent upon him marooned in the fetid swamp of betrayal

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