“We should tell Maliki, loudly and in public, that he owes his job to us, and that further prosecution of our military operations in his country will be conducted with regard only to U.S. interests, as determined in consensus by our established domestic political processes. And if he doesn’t like that, he can go to hell.”
–John Derbyshire
To review:
“Iraq is a sovereign nation, and we stay because they have asked us to be there,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in October [2006].
“Iraq is a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy,” President Bush said in November [2006].
“It’s a sovereign nation; it’s their system, they make those decisions,” [then] Maj. Gen. [now Lieutenant General] William B. Caldwell IV, the American command’s [former] chief spokesman in Iraq[.]
From “sovereign nation” to “when I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you” in less than two years.
File that under: Mission Accomplished.
(Via Below the Beltway.)