The President announced that U.S. troops would be leaving Iraq by the end of the year, and immediately after the announcement we had neo-con hand wringing and expressions of indignation.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, called the announcement “a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world.”

“I share the desire for all of our troops to come home as quickly as possible. But all of our military commanders with whom I have spoken on my repeated visits to Iraq have told me that U.S. national security interests and the enduring needs of Iraq’s military required a continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011 to safeguard the gains that we and our Iraqi partners have made,” McCain said in a statement. “I am confident that no U.S. commander of any stature who has served in Iraq recommended the course of action that has now been taken.”

The usual round of vapid statements came from Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry about the Obama Administration not doing enough to keep our troops in Iraq. Not a word from three of them on how to pay for their call for extended troop presence in Iraq, although Michelle Bachmann claimed she would try to assess Iraq for the full amount we have spent (about a trillion dollars). As unrealistic as Bachmann’s suggestion is at least she had the decency to offer some tip of the hat to the notion that we have to pay for these overseas adventures.

She said she would also have demanded that Iraq use its oil revenues to “repay the full cost of liberating them.”

No word from any Republican that I saw on the Iraqi government position that U.S. Servicemen would lose their “immunity” to Iraqi law after January 1???????? Are the Republicans suggesting that we would stay in Iraq, add to the trillion we have spent there already, and then face the possibility of U.S. military personnel being tried for violations of Iraqi law? What level of stupidity are these folks willing to go to to maintain a U.S. military presence that the Iraqi’s do not want?

We should not be surprised by any of this. The neo-cons have empowered Iran by this immense display of hubris and arrogance. The full scope of their error has not yet been realized, but the contours are clearly in sight. (see the Iraqi government support for the al-Assad regime in Damascus). But hubris knows no bounds, so we have the Morning Joe clip attached below that shows Sen. Lindsay Graham talking about helping rebuild the Libyan infrastructure. Can’t rebuild ours, but we have already rebuilt the Iraqi infrastructure, the Afghan infrastructure, and now apparently we are supposed to rebuild the Libyan infrastructure. Ole Lindsay talks about all the money that can be made over thar in Libya. U.S. Government money enabling huge private profit making. Now that is capitalism at its finest. Even Joe Scarborough can’t take it, and points out the vast hypocrisy of the neo-con position on rebuilding infrastructure abroad, but digging in against any spending to rebuild ours right here in the good old U.S. of A. Pretty indefensible position, but the neo-cons have never been afraid of the indefensible.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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