{"id":34857,"date":"2013-03-31T10:27:30","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T14:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34857"},"modified":"2013-03-31T11:09:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-31T15:09:05","slug":"oif-vets-bite-me-got-your-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34857","title":{"rendered":"OIF vets; Bite Me got your medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I was reading the Army Times today, something I don’t normally read and I ran across this article<\/a> about the Iraq Commitment Medal, a medal designed by the Iraqi government for members of the US military who helped the Iraqis throw off the yoke of Hussein and fought back the al Qaeda militants who invaded the country. <\/p>\n

The title of the article is what drew me to it; OIF vets waiting for Iraq Commitment Medal<\/a>. Yeah, I’m sure you’re not all ready to go on strike if you don’t get another bit of ribbon. But towards the end of the article is what tempted me to write about it;<\/p>\n

\u2022 Will anyone get one? The short answer is yes: Vice President Joe Biden. He received a medal from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during a special \u201cday of commitment\u201d<\/a> ceremony in Baghdad on Dec. 1, 2011. Since then, however, the Defense Department has removed an illustration of the medal design – and photos of Biden receiving the medal – from its website. <\/p>\n

In his speech in Baghdad, Biden noted that the U.S. was withdrawing combat troops from Iraq in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement between Iraq and the coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cA promise made is a promise kept,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somehow I missed that story, probably because it was on Military Times and I don’t read that POS normally. But, the fact that Bite Me got a medal that celebrates American commitment to Iraq is a comedy of errors. For one thing, Bite Me wanted to partition Iraq into four different countries – yes, the smartest man on the planet wanted to break the nation up into pieces. That wouldn’t cause any problems would it? I mean, the war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein began because Hussein claimed that Kuwait was the 19th province of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Bite Me called the “surge” a failure<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Biden offered an early rebuttal to next week’s testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador there. Petraeus and Crocker are expected to say the recent buildup in troops has succeeded in improving security. But they also likely will say that a period of assessment is needed this summer before officials can decide whether troop withdrawals can continue. Democrats have called this approach unacceptable and said they would pursue an alternative policy through legislation. They said their focus will be on restoring the strength of the Army and Marines and refocusing the nation’s resources on fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. “I believe the president has no strategy for success in Iraq,” Biden said. “His plan is to muddle through, and hand the problem off to his successor.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both Bite Me and Obama voted against the “surge”, the crowning achievement in Iraq, but somehow he gets the Iraq Commitment Medal. I don’t think “commitment” means what they think it means. I know you guys don’t care about one more little foreign award, but I’m pretty upset at the fact that Bite Me, who tried to end the war before it reached any kind of success, and voted to cut off spending for continued operations no less than six times in 2007, and then in 2008 tried to undermine the security that had been won in Iraq by demeaning the momentous achievements by the troops there, gets the only Iraq Commitment Medal in existence.<\/p>\n

It’s like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who has been warring their ass off. Or something.<\/p>\n

Added <\/strong> Here is a video of the full event<\/a> were you can see the Iraqi Government giving the medal to the VP. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I was reading the Army Times today, something I don’t normally read and I ran … OIF vets; Bite Me got your medal<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}