Another General tells the truth, but too late: we were wrong to pull out of Iraq.

'We Were Wrong': Commander in Charge of Training Iraqis Regrets U.S. Pullout

By  Richard Engel and Carlo Angerer

• 'We Were Wrong': Commander in Charge of Training Iraqis Regrets U.S. Pullout

By  Richard Engel and Carlo Angerer 

 

ERBIL, Iraq — Four years ago, when Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero was in charge of training Iraqi forces to hold their country together, he called them fearless and “absolutely reliable.” 

But today, as Iraqi soldiers struggle against the ferocious militants of ISIS and the sting of humiliating defeat on the battlefield, the commander now says the United States was wrong to pull all its troops out of the country, with no residual force left behind to support the Iraqi army. 

“We were wrong by not making a stronger case and insisting that we needed to stay in some numbers to continue to train, advise and develop this unfinished force,” Barbero told NBC News. 

Watch a special, “Richard Engel Reporting: The Battle Against ISIS,” Friday at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC.

 

Barbero now works in the private sector and visits Iraq as a consultant. In 2010, he appeared much surer about the Iraqi forces he was training at the time. He said he was confident they were up to the task for maintaining security. 

“I see a force that is capable, that is out on the streets every day providing security,” he said then. “They are reliable. They are absolutely reliable. They are fearless.” 

But the rapid advance of ISIS into northern Iraq has eroded his confidence. When ISIS fighters advanced toward Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, two full Iraqi army divisions disintegrated as soldiers shed their uniforms and dropped their weapons.

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This was obvious, of course.  There is more to the saying "Both politics and nature abhor a vacuum."

Events in Iraq and Ukraine prove this yet again as the ignorant-in-chief has screwed up what so many tens of thousands have died and been maimed for... and for what tens of thousands more will required to die and be maimed to repair.

Much of it unnecessary.