For the Want of a SOFA, a War was Lost...

Remember this oft-repeated phrase from the story of Richard III's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field?

"For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost.  For the want of a shoe, a horse was lost.  For the want of a horse, a rider was lost.  For the want of a rider, the war was lost."

Oh, you don't?  So, you're the one...

Anyway, it provides us with an amazingly accurate and timely stage upon which to mount our next posting:

"...We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq."

   -  Barack Hussein Obama, December 14, 2011

Our POTUS famously chose to precipitously withdraw all of our combat troops from Iraq without negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi leadership.  Now, not to sound like a history teacher, but every President we've ever had, ever had, negotiated such an agreement when preparing to depart a country over which our military had succeeded in winning a victory.  Such was the case in Iraq.

You may recall that our Mr. Obama campaigned back in 2007 on how Iraq was the "bad war."  Afghanistan, he said, on the other hand, was the "good war."  So he promised his loyal followers that he'd withdraw all our forces from that "bad war" place if they'd just elect him President.  And so they did. And so he did.  Without, I might add, forcing the leadership we'd installed in Iraq to sign a piece of paper permitting us to leave behind a "tripwire" force.  He didn't want it.  So he didn't require it.  He didn't ask for it.  And we didn't get it.  

Tripwire?  That's military-speak for just enough troops to protect our victory, while insuring that we'd be required to return in full force should the defeated enemy choose to later rise back up and contest our win.  Take a look at South Korea if you'd like an example. We have nearly 30,000 soldiers stationed just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Should Kim Jung the Un decide to unleash his 2 million-man army and march them south, he'd have to run over our troops to do so.  And America would respond by blowing his ass, as Dirty Harry would say, "clean off."

That's exactly what we did in Germany and Italy and Japan following the end of World War Two.  We spent biblical levels of blood and treasure securing a win, and we left behind armed forces to protect that victory.  And they're still there, more than 70 years later.  That's what you do when you have a brain in your head.  Unlike the leadership the Lefties among us have unfortunately installed in Foggy Bottom.

Our military leadership, the generals and admirals, wanted us to leave behind somewhere between 16,000 and 18,000 battle-hardened troops.  But, they said, we needed not less than 10,700.  Minimum!  Barry the First said, ummm, NO! He just couldn't afford, he said, to spend the money necessary to plant that many of our troops that far away. Too expensive, don't you know.  And we all know just how sensitive he is to excessive expenditures (sorry for the sarcasm).

Doubt me?  Okay, kiddies, here's the Bottom Line.  America has more than 160,000 American military troops stationed outside the Continental United States.  Plus, we have a bit north of 70,000 additional soldiers and sailors and Marines in various "contingency" operations.  Now, don't ask me what, exactly, is a "contingency" operation.  Although at one time our little soiree in Afghanistan, before it was a sort-of declared non-war, was called a "contingency operation."  So, maybe it's a bunch of James Bond scenarios and Seal Teams and Ranger battalions and paratroopers and such, engaging in military ops that aren't called military ops.  Who knows? However, there's 70,000 of our best and brightest doing some of that.  

So, one could applaud Barry for not wanting to spend the money necessary to leave 10,000 in Iraq.  Exxceeeeppppppt, there's more than a quarter million doing something somewhere around the globe on our military payroll.  Want a list?  Okay, here's the list:

-  Germany:             48,000
-  Japan:                  51,000
-  S. Korea:              29,000
-  Kuwait:                 15,000
-  Italy:                     11,000
-  U. Kingdom:         10,000
-  Bahrain:                  2,800
-  Turkey:                 15,000
-  Belgium:                 1,200
-  Cuba:                     1,000
-  Qatar:                        800
-  Spain:                     1,800 

And my personal favorite...

-  Kyrgyzstan:              3,700

There's plenty more, but this is just a list of the biggest of the bunch.  And to be perfectly transparent, these data are from 2012, the latest that the Department of Defense has made available.  They're not too current, are they?

In summation, we have more than 1,000 military bases in 63 countries around the globe.  If Barry really, really wanted to lower our overseas troop count by 10,000, can someone somewhere tell me with a straight face that we couldn't have pulled that many soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen out of South Korea, Germany or Italy? How about 3,500 from each. They wouldn't even be missed...

But no, my friends, he had to squander our victory in Iraq - and it WAS a victory, by pulling out all our combat troops, leaving a vacuum in that fragile country that the Bad Guys have now occupied.  We've been told our whole lives that nature abhors a vacuum.  And now we have indelible proof of that scientific theorem.  We lost thousands of our fellow Americans winning this war, whether you bought into it or not. And the bozo in the White House tossed it away like so much leftover pizza.

Think of it this way:  We suffered the loss of more than 400 of our bravest soldiers and Marines in the capture of Ramadi. Many thousands more were wounded.  But we won. We captured that key city in our war to defeat Islamic radical terrorism.  And now, five years later, after our Golfer-in-Chief abandoned it to the Bad Guys, they just retook Ramadi.  All our losses were in vain.  And I, along with most of my fellow ex-soldiers, blame him.   

There was no ISIS under George W. Bush.  There was no ISIL under Bush.  There was no Boko Haram under "W." There was no Al Shabaab under Bush 43.  There was no mass slaughtering of Christians.  There were no terrorists invading, beheading and burning alive our friends and neighbors in this region under Mr. George Bush.   

BUT THERE IS NOW! 

So, if you're among those of the Lefty persuasion, I apologize for ruining your day with some of those inconvenient "facts."  Perhaps some accurate information such as this might prove to be just the push you need to leave the Liberal camp and go toward the light...

Things we Ought to Know, but Don't...

In follow-up to my recent posting, "Things we Ought to Have, but Don't," which you too can read by scrolling DOWN a bit, I received literally tens of requests to add to the meme with "Things we Ought to Know, but Don't."  

I thought about it for awhile, and yes, I said to myself, "Self, there are quite a few things I'd like to know.  But, in spite of my mammoth, near encyclopedic knowledge, compiled over a lifetime of scholarship and trouble-making, I really don't." So, my friends, and you are my friends, here goes...

1.  I'd like to know exactly what some extremely rich Hollywood-types are using for brains.  These are the folks who willingly cough up $32,800 for a plate of rubber chicken and the chance to hear B. Hussein Obama prattle on about "income inequality."  Think of it:  They are so monumentally stupid as to pay to hear a guy with no previous experience of any kind tell them they make too much money.  I'd be glad to tell them that for a whole lot less. I'd do it for, let's see now, ummm, how about $200? I'd even stick around and sign autographs if they wished me to. Five bucks each. Wouldn't you like to know how these boneheads got so stinking rich? 

2.  I'd like to know who paid for Barack Hussein Obama, a poor kid from a single-mom household, to attend Punuhou Prep School, Honolulu, the most expensive and elite private high school in all of the Hawaiian Islands.  Wouldn't you like to know that too? And speaking of who paid, I'd like to know how Barack Hussein Obama got a full ride to Occidental College back in the seventies, when everybody knows Occidental didn't give full rides except to foreign nationals. And, as everybody also knows, Mr. Obama was born and raised in Hawaii, right?  Right?  He was born in Hawaii, right? You'd like to know that also, wouldn't you?

I'd also like to know how he got into Columbia?  Word has it he had only so-so grades while in high school, although we'll never know because he's paid millions to have his records buried deeper than the creases in Robert Redford's face. And how about Harvard Law?  How'd he get into that relatively famous institution of higher learning? And who paid for it? Did he take out student loans?  Or maybe it was because of his race?  Wouldn't you like to know?

3.  Illegal aliens demonstrated recently in front of the White House.  They were demanding to be granted amnesty.  They said they deserved it.  Why?  God only knows.  There are literally millions of nice, fully-qualified foreigners who have made application to come here legally.  Some have waited, or are waiting, for ten or more years.  Yet those who broke into our wonderful country seem to be given preference over those who are paying Big Bucks to apply legally.  I wonder what these dufuses could be thinking. Hundreds of illegals demonstrate in front of the mansion where our semi-retired president resides and nobody arrests them. Those who continue to play the game by the rules and pay the $Zillions in fees and await their turn for years are very simply dumbass fools.  So I'd kind of like to know why the nice law enforcement types who work for our POTUS didn't arrest these criminals.  Wouldn't you like to know that also?

4.  And speaking of dumbass fools, just recently a thousand or so fast food workers demonstrated in front of Mickey D's Oak Park, Illinois headquarters.  They were demanding, demanding, a raise to $15.00 and hour.  Not $10 an hour. Not $12.  But a full doubling of the current minimum wage! And, they said, if they didn't get it they would resort to civil disobedience!  I'd kind of like to know why the employers of these brain-dead commie drones did not summarily fire them from their min-wage, burger-flipping jobs.  That assumes that they are actually burger-flippers and not paid union thugs in the employ of the SEIU.  The SEIU, or Service Employees International Union, for those of you who don't know (and why don't you know?), is a group of reverse Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich...themselves.  And considering more than 90% of Mickey's stores are franchises, and McD can't legally do a thing about what their franchisees choose to pay their employees, why do you suppose these dummies are being paid to waste their time protesting?  I'd like to know that. Wouldn't you?

5.  I'd also like to know why, if America has more oil than any other nation, and it does, we don't drill and frack our way to energy independence.  Could it be that the eco-weenie terrorists, like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Oceans Foundation, and greenie billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and all his little oil-hating pals, give B. Hussein Obama and his socialist buddies more money than those who wish us to stop buying oil from people who hate us and want us dead?  

The net result is that we still don't have the Keystone XL Pipeline, in spite of five State Department reviews and five State Department unconditional approvals, and approval by both houses of Congress.  Why?  Our Community Organizer-in-Chief vetoed it.  His action (or inaction) costs us billions of dollars in economic activity, 20,000 good, solid, high-paying new union jobs, 800,000 barrels of new North American oil every day and the good will of Canada.  That would be, ummm, Canada, our Great Neighbor to the North, which, unlike our friends to the south, somehow manages not to ship its poor down our way.      

Good question, right?

6.  I'd like to know why Lefties have come to believe that guns have little tiny brains of their own.  They must, otherwise guns wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning, according to them, obtain some ammo, load themselves, and then go on a hunt for innocent people to shoot down like dirty dogs.  Oh, they don't do that?   Tell the lefties.

Why is it that a bomber can bomb, but the lefties don't blame the bombs.  A knife-wielding thug can go on a slashing spree and the commie loons don't blame knives. And a guy can beat the crap out of somebody with a Louisville Slugger and no one wants to outlaw bats.  But if somebody happens to shoot somebody else with any kind of firearm, the lefties go nuts with ban-all-the-guns campaigns.  Could it be they just want to disarm us so we're completely defenseless against their creeping government excesses?

And speaking of guns, I'd like to know why our famously anti-gun POTUS can run (actually slow walk) thousands of "assault rifles," paid for with our Stimulus Program taxpayer funds, across our southern border to Meheeeeeko's drug cartels, and yet continues to try to disarm us using any means possible.   What reason could B. Hussein Obama have for wanting to take away our guns unless he has some nefarious plan to unleash on us that would be deep-sixed if we were to remain armed and able to defend ourselves? Hmmm.  

Just take a look at Chicago if you'd like to know what a disarmed populace looks like. Yes, Chicago.  The very city that Obama and his then-Top Cop Eric Holder disarmed via their anti-gun laws before bringing their particular brand of politics to D.C.  Chicago has the very most restrictive gun laws in the Country and the very highest murder rate. You think there might be a correlation? 

7.  I'd like know why Hillary Rodham Clinton decided back in 1969 to choose Saul Alinsky and his famous tome, "Rules for Radicals," as her senior thesis at Wellesley College.  Alinsky, an infamous Chicago Marxist, desired to tear America down and replace its capitalistic system with one more like Cuba's and North Korea's.  Clinton was obviously enamored with Alinsky, and perhaps still is.  We should ask her, "Why?" Oh, by the way, one Mr. B. Hussein Obama was also a student of Alinsky and his community organizing methods. You're observing Him (with a cynical capital "H") utilize those methods on us every day.  Maybe somebody ought to ask him as well.  But one thing we know...it won't be the Lap Dog Media.  Wouldn't you like to know why the media absolutely refuses to do their job and hold our elected leftist leaders' feet to the fire?

9.  I like to know why, if there's a Black Congressional Caucus, a Black Entertainment Network and National Association of Advancement for Colored People, there's no White Congressional Caucus, a White Entertainment Network, or the National Association for the Advancement of White People?  Or even "Beige" People?  I mean, beige is a color, right?  Perhaps you'd like to know that as well. 

10.  I'd like to know why hair grows faster in my ears and in my nose than on top of my head.  What's with that?   

11.  And lastly, I'd like to know exactly which language the Reverend Al Sharpton speaks?  Some of the words that tumble quite garbled from his sinful, tax-cheating lips sound a bit like English, but trust me, he isn't speaking English.  Perhaps it's Ebolanese.  If you have an answer to this existential question, write me.  I'd love to know the truth.  Oh, and another question about Al.  Why does MSNBC give this guy an hour's air time every night to fumble and stumble and make a complete fool of himself?  Perhaps it's because NBC is run by a bunch of leftist commie socialist sympathizers. Or because they're afraid he'll sick his gang of protesters on the company if they dump him?  You decide.

There's some other stuff I don't know but would like to.  I intend to continue noting them for your ingestion as the weeks and months rumble along.  If you've got one you'd like memorialized, send it along.  I'll be glad to give you credit...