Policymakers and historians will continue to analyze the strategic lessons of Iraq — that’s important to do. Our commanders will incorporate the hard-won lessons into future military campaigns — that’s important to do. But the most important lesson that we can take from you is not about military strategy –- it’s a lesson about our national character.
Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq, Dec 14, 2011
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A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
State Senator's Barack Obama Speech Against the Iraq War Oct 2002
Adding:
Two stories which ran today about the military Obama seems so very proud of:
Marines promoted inflated story for Medal of Honor recipient
Crucial parts that the Marine Corps publicized and Obama described are untrue, unsubstantiated or exaggerated, according to dozens of military documents McClatchy examined.
Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq
In their own words, the report documents the dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not “remarkable,” but as routine.
Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.”
Lessons about the national character? I hope not.