Obama seeks support for air strikes
WASHINGTON — As the crisis in Iraq deepens, U.S. President Barack Obama met late Wednesday with congressional leaders in an effort to build support for his proposed strategy of air strikes to deal with the threat of a terrorist organization gaining control of OPEC’s second largest oil producer.
Despite growing pressure from Republicans, however, Obama continues to rule out sending troops for on-theground fighting in Iraq. He has also remained reluctant to use manned air attacks on the Sunni terrorist militia Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant forces for fear of striking civilians.
After the meeting, lawmakers refused to comment on the details, but agreed that Obama does not need congressional approval to aid the Iraqi government. The White House issued a statement saying Obama briefed the lawmakers on U.S. efforts to strengthen Iraq’s forces without giving specifics. The U.S. has sent 250 troops to Iraq to shore up embassy and airport security.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at a press briefing Obama’s goal is to help the Iraqi government create a strategy to fight extremists while settling differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
He noted that while Iraq has twice officially requested U.S. air strikes on ISIL forces, “taking direct military action by the United States will not solve Iraq’s problems.”
He said the “primary objective is to assure that extremist groups like ISIL don’t establish a safe haven.”
Democrat Charles Ruppersberger, a member of the congressional intelligence committee, called on Obama to form alliances with the Arab League and individual Arab countries before taking any military action in Iraq.
He said it is important for the U.S. not to look like it is involved in a sectarian war supporting the Shiite government of Nouri al-Maliki against the Sunnis.
“We have to separate the Sunni situation from ISIL,” he said. “We’ve got to stand up to ISIL.”
He said the U.S. must not be dragged into a sectarian conflict that has been going on for centuries.
Meanwhile, Bush administration officials responsible for getting the U.S. into Iraq in 2003 have launched a concerted attack on Obama.
Former vice-president Dick Cheney, one of the architects of t he I raq war, targeted Obama in a Wall Street Journal article Wednesday when he said, “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
The article, signed by Cheney and his wife Liz, went on to say, “Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al-Qaida presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, replied, “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history.”
Long forgotten neo-conservative hawk Paul Wolfowitz, who as deputy defence secretary under George W. Bush was another architect of the Iraq war, appeared on at least four different television networks to blame Obama for Iraq’s resurgent sectarian violence.
He claimed that if Obama had left U.S. troops in Iraq there would have been no ISIL and no Sunni uprising.
Wolfowitz is the same man who in 2003 tried to sell the war on Iraq to congress by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that there was no potential for Sunni-Shiite violence after a U.S. invasion and that Iraq’s oil profits would finance Iraq reconstruction. All these statements have proven wrong.
Final cost on the Iraq war is $1.7 trillion US with an additional $490 billion in benefits to veterans. The war killed between 176,000 and 189,000 people of which about 134,000 were Iraqi civilians and 3,528 were U.S. soldiers killed in battle.