Odierno, who argued for leaving 20,000 troops in Iraq but met resistance from several senior Obama administration officials as well as then Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, said the decision to pull out became a self-inflicted wound.<\/p>\n
The withdrawal made it harder, if not impossible, for the U.S. government to independently assess what was happening on the ground, at a time when the alienation of the Sunni population fueled the rise of ISIS.<\/p>\n
“We lost what we call our human intelligence network on the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean we used to have a pretty significant human intelligence operation. So as we pulled out, our U.S. military, we lose it. So we have to depend on Iraqis, which they collect intelligence, but they do it a little bit differently than we do and they look for different things.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I don’t see any nation in the world volunteering enough soldiers to fight on the ground to get us to a 50,000 number. I certainly don’t see this administration being able to negotiate with our allies to get us anywhere near 50,000. They’ve proven themselves to be unreliable in the war against terrorists. They can’t even admit there’s a war going on, how are they going to fight it?<\/p>\n
The retired general continued to sound the alarm about military cuts, saying the army has “lost capability” at a time when the likelihood of responding to threats on five continents is not hypothetical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, the Obama Administration is betting that those chickens won’t come home to roost until February.<\/p>\n
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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