Maybe in some narrowed context he stated such. He has been more than outspoken in providing all his reasons for running. Trying to limit those reasons to what you stated and suggesting it was his sole reason for running is just completely untrue.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
In that intrview he said he really liked quite a few people. In the past he's said that of Pelosi. Among others, many of which are the most despicable people in politics. I he likes them, or really likes them, as he said, he most certainly isn't on America's side.
It could very well be he's another Soros puppet. If they can't win with their boy Obama, get another in there that approaches evereything on the elites to do list from a slightly different angle.
Keep in mind the players of this enormous and decades old game of "let's destroy America" are very patient people.
BAN THE RAINBOW FLAG! PERVERTS OFFEND ME!
"When is penguin season, daddy? I wanna go kill a penguin!" ---- 4 yr old Archerhuntress
I believe he's among the very few truly honorable and patriotic among the 535 but that doesn't mean he'll always see through the multitude of tricks and traps and will always choose wisely.
If the elites who pull the strings are serious about Trump, I wouldn't be surprised to see West being talked into position 2 on the ticket.
BAN THE RAINBOW FLAG! PERVERTS OFFEND ME!
"When is penguin season, daddy? I wanna go kill a penguin!" ---- 4 yr old Archerhuntress
isaac - Got to say it: There is a good bit of I and Me, in what Trump is spouting.
And we already have a narcissist in the Oval Office, .
Good, bad, or better, only four years is what it would cost us?
And, Trump would have too build a solid alliance or backing to oppose the socialism strings that maneuver the Jerk puppet. On the global scale measuring by puppet string, Trump is currently small change.
And, in the end result, the narcissist will usually take the advice from the guy they see in a mirror.
The best I can visualize w/Trump as POTUS: Perhaps he would be able to weaken, fray, or even negate some of the active socialism at work in the present. The only way I can see that happening is w/Trump using the same modus operandi that the Jerk is using, to reverse the socialist/globalism trends and agendas.
Mike...don't work yourself into a tizzy,buddy. It's going to be difficult to stop the Trump train,man!!
He's a "bring it on" guy and there isn't much he hasn't already heard many times before. He doesn't give a schit and he'll be right back on you like a pit bull on meth. You don't become a billionaire by being a puzzy..
If he makes Iraq pay us a trillion.3,he'll be worth the vote on that alone. This country needs a ruthless businessman at the helm for a few years. The same 'ol,same 'ols just ain't cutting the mustard.
Let the ME,China and OPEC fear him, you don't need to.
Last edited by isaac; 04/17/11.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
dream on, he couldn't even support his own Troops. He's going to confiscate Iraqs oil after Bush gave it back to Iraq? Wake up dorothy your back in kansas.
You don't have any pictures of trumps gun collection do you? I know he has a birth certificate, but does he have an NRA membership? Think he'll buy one a week before elections, like romney did?
Son of a liberal: " What did you do in the War On Terror, Daddy?"
Liberal father: " I fought the Americans, along with all the other liberals."
April 17, 2011 Gates: Some US troops may stay if Iraq wants By ROBERT BURNS | Published: 4:07 AM 04/07/2011 | Updated: 7:03 PM 04/07/2011
BAGHDAD (AP) � Even with the burdens of combat in Afghanistan and unrest in the Arab world, the U.S. would keep American troops in Iraq beyond the agreed 2011 final withdrawal date if Iraq�s government asked for extra help, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
His comments give weight to an idea that is politically sensitive in both nations and which Iraq officially rejects.
During what he said would probably be his final visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief, Gates urged the fractious Iraqi government to decide �pretty quickly� whether it wants to extend the U.S. presence beyond Dec. 31 to enable continued training of its security forces. Gates shares the view of many in the U.S. military that a longer U.S. stay would be useful in ensuring that Iraq�s security and political gains do not unravel, but publicly he has insisted that the decision is Iraq�s.
�We are willing to have a presence beyond (2011), but we�ve got a lot of commitments,� Gates said during a question-and-answer session with troops at a U.S. military compound on the outskirts of Baghdad. He cited U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Libya and noted that few people realize that 19 U.S. Navy ships and about 18,000 U.S. military personnel are assisting in earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor relief efforts in Japan.
�So if folks here are going to want us to have a presence, we�re going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning,� he added. �I think there is interest in having a continuing presence. The politics are such that we�ll just have to wait and see because the initiative ultimately has to come from the Iraqis.�
The American military presence is broadly unpopular in Iraq, even though many Iraqis say they are glad that the U.S.-led war toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis say the visible presence of U.S. forces is a slight to their national pride, and unnecessary eight years after the start of the war.
Iraq�s perpetually squabbling politicians are wary of suggesting that the country cannot stand on its own, for fear that rivals could exploit such a statement.
Gates� press secretary, Geoff Morrell said it was clear from Thursday�s talks that al-Maliki does want US troops to stay beyond 2011.
�It is our sense that there is a recognition on the part of Iraqi leaders that there is still a need for US forces in some capacity,� Morrell said.
The main problem is selling an extension to a skeptical Iraqi public. There are persistent rumors on the street that the U.S. has ulterior motives in Iraq, and wants to stay to keep a better foothold in the Middle East instead of as a backstop to Iraq�s national defenses.
U.S. officials reject that outright, saying they have no desire or plan for a permanent military footprint in the country.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Gates that he expects all U.S. troops to be out of Iraq by the end of the year as required under a 2008 security agreement between Baghdad and Washington, said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
�The prime minister informed Gates that the Iraqi government does not want the presence of the American forces in their current position,� al-Dabbagh told The AP after al-Maliki�s meeting with Gates. �We think that the presence of these forces is not suitable for Iraq, and these forces have to leave by the end of 2011.�
A government statement said Iraq�s security forces are up to the task �to repel any aggression.�
The prime minister stressed that Iraqi security forces, both the police and army, now have the capabilities to repel any aggression, and that the capabilities of our security forces to impose security and stability are constantly improving, according to the statement.
However, al-Maliki, who barely held onto his job last year after his party failed to win the most parliamentary seats in national elections, maintained that a small number of American troops might stay past 2011 as part of a training office within the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Al-Maliki is under pressure from the political wing of hardcore Shiite followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who are threatening to revolt if American troops stay past the end of the year � despite the fragile security in Iraq, where people continue to die nearly every day in bombings and shootings.
Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James F. Jeffrey estimated there would be no more than 200 U.S. forces and civilian Defense Department employees in that office.
�After the departure of the current forces and the purchasing of weapons, there must be some forces present here for training,� al-Dabbagh said Thursday. �But the presence of the forces in their current position won�t be extended.�
In separate remarks Thursday, the top American commander in Iraq, said that country is lacking in important security capabilities, including the defense of its air space and the wherewithal to supply and maintain its own forces.
Asked whether all Iraqi government officials are aware of these gaps, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin replied, �Some more than others.�
Speaking to a group of reporters traveling with Gates, Austin gave the strong impression that he thinks Iraq needs a U.S. military presence beyond December, but he said he had not yet been asked to provide a recommendation to Washington. He said Iraq faced the possibility of a �more violent environment� next year, in the absence of U.S. troops, if it cannot resolve political problems like the Kurd-Arab tensions in Kirkuk and elsewhere in the north.
Austin said that because of the relentless insurgency that consumed Iraq until recently, the U.S. military has not focused �in earnest� on training and equipping Iraqi security forces to defend against outside threats. He noted, for example, that Iraq�s army will be receiving modern tanks and artillery just at the scheduled end of U.S. military involvement in December. It has little in the way of an air force, and its intelligence agencies are weak.
Austin said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki�s failure thus far to appoint a defense minister and an interior miniter � the two officials most directly responsible for security forces � has complicated their process of deciding whether to invite the Obama administration to negotiate a new legal document to permit U.S. forces to remain here beyond December.
�The clock is ticking,� Austin said.
The U.S. now has about 47,000 troops in Iraq, and they will begin leaving in large numbers in late summer or early fall. The U.S. led an invasion in March 2003 that toppled the government of President Saddam Hussein a month later, but an insurgency soon set in and the U.S. got mired in a conflict that has lasted far longer � and cost far more American and Iraqi lives � than Washington had anticipated.
In a brief exchange with reporters during a photo session with Gates earlier Thursday, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, James Jeffrey, said U.S. ground forces are �the glue� that is holding the country together. He said this leaves a mixed picture of the situation in Iraq because making arrangements to keep U.S. troops here beyond December is going to be difficult.
Among Americans, attention to Iraq�s future has waned as violence here dropped off and the U.S. withdrawal date approaches.
Meghan O�Sullivan, a top Iraq adviser to President George W. Bush from 2005-07, said in an email exchange that al-Maliki faces enormous domestic political pressures on several fronts, including a small but vocal number of Iraqis demanding better government, and a security situation that is improved but still tense.
Together, these pressures make it difficult for al-Maliki to feel he can publicly invite the U.S. military to stay beyond this year.
�Understandably, the Obama administration was hoping for this sort of invitation, and likely feels struck, given that it is not forthcoming,� said O�Sullivan, now a professor of international affairs at Harvard University�s John F. Kennedy School. �They can�t be seen wanting to keep more troops in Iraq than the Iraqis do.�
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
BAGHDAD�Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.
In his first media interview since the Iraqi Parliament confirmed his new cabinet in December, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sat down for an exclusive conversation with The Wall Street Journal's Sam Dagher. Here are some excerpts.
.Mr. Maliki spoke with The Wall Street Journal in a two-hour interview, his first since Iraq ended nine months of stalemate and seated a new government after an inconclusive election, allowing Mr. Maliki to begin a second term as premier.
A majority of Iraqis�and some Iraqi and U.S. officials�have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone. "This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed."
He also said that even as Iraq bids farewell to U.S. troops, he wouldn't allow his nation to be pulled into alignment with Iran, despite voices supporting such an alliance within his government.
He added that a kind of "paranoia" about a Tehran-Baghdad alliance in the U.S. is matched by a fear in Iran about U.S. influence: "An Iranian official visited me in the past and told me, 'I thought the Americans were standing at the door of your office,' " he said.
In an interview in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden also said Iran had failed to buy influence during the election or to co-opt Mr. Maliki, who was among the members of the current Iraqi government who briefly took refuge in Iran during the reign of Saddam Hussein.
In an interview, he said Iraq would assume responsibility for all its own security by the end of 2011, and would not fall into alignment with Iran.
.Mr. Maliki's new majority depends partly on followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But Mr. Biden credited Mr. Maliki for denying Mr. Sadr's bloc any control of Iraqi security, while forming a government with full buy-in from Iraq's main factions of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
U.S. military commanders still accuse Iran of funding, training and providing sanctuary to Shiite militias, like Mr. Sadr's Promised Day Brigades, which they say are responsible for attacks against U.S. forces and gangster-style assassinations that continue to plague Baghdad and other areas.
Maliki on Iraq's Future "Our country has the liberal, secular, Islamist, conservative, Christian, Muslim, tribal. This is our country. ... Now listen, all those that you meet among the officials are referred to by their tribe. I am al-Maliki attributed to Bani Malik, a large tribe present in Iraq and extending to the Hijaz and Yemen. So denying reality will produce nothing." -- More from the interview
Baghdad to Tackle Oil Issues, PM Vows .Mr. Maliki suggested his government had co-opted militias like the one associated with Mr. Sadr. "The militias are now part of the government and have entered the political process," said Mr. Maliki. The Sadr contingent, he added, "is moving in a satisfactory direction of taking part in the government, renouncing violence and abandoning military activity, and that's why we welcome it."
Security is the new government's top priority, Mr. Maliki said, as in his previous term. Sectarian violence and suicide bombings continue to plague the country as the full withdrawal of U.S. soldiers nears. Almost a dozen people were killed in double suicide bombings on Monday outside provincial government offices in the city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, according to security officials.
A resumption of more extreme violence, of course, could alter the thinking in Baghdad and Washington about the U.S. timetable.
But Mr. Maliki said the only way for any of the remaining 50,000 or so American soldiers to stay beyond 2011 would be for the two nations to negotiate�with the approval of Iraq's Parliament�a new Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, similar to the one concluded in 2008.
That deal took a year of protracted negotiations in the face of vehement opposition from many among Mr. Maliki's own Shiite constituency, and no repeat is expected.
Mr. Maliki and U.S. officials have refrained for the most part from raising the issue publicly during the months of political wrangling in Baghdad, as Mr. Maliki negotiated with potential coalition partners, many of whom have adamantly opposed an extended U.S. stay.
A senior official in President Barack Obama's administration said Washington was "on track" to withdraw all its remaining soldiers in Iraq by the end of next year. That's the final milestone in the security agreement, following the reduction in American troop levels to below 50,000 in August and the pullout of U.S. soldiers from most Iraqi inner cities in June 2009. "The prime minister is exactly right," said the senior official.
During the interview, Mr. Maliki said he was heartened by America's "commitment" to honoring the agreements it reached with Iraq, and he laughed approvingly when told that U.S. Ambassador James F. Jeffrey keeps a frayed copy of the so-called Strategic Framework Agreement in his leather briefcase. That document calls, in broad terms, for long-term cooperation in security, defense, economy, energy and culture, among other areas.
In a briefing for Western reporters last week, Mr. Jeffrey said that despite the requirement to pull out all American troops at the end of 2011, the framework document and other agreements between Baghdad and Washington contain "a very robust security agenda."
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will house a "significantly sized" office aimed at security cooperation, Mr. Jeffrey said, made up of about 80 to 90 military personnel that would take over most of the current functions of the U.S. military in advising, assisting, training and equipping Iraqi forces. That's similar to arrangements with other countries in the region, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The embassy would also oversee a major Iraqi police-training program.
Mr. Maliki played down Iraq's need for any major help from the U.S. military, even while acknowledging serious deficiencies in areas including control of airspace and borders. He said the days when ethnic or sectarian-based militias roamed the streets of Iraq and operated above the law were over.
"Not a single militia or gang can confront Iraqi forces and take over a street or a house," said Mr. Maliki. "This is finished; we are comfortable about that."
He said full withdrawal of U.S. troops also will remove a prime motivator of insurgents�both the Shiite fighters tied to militia groups and Iran, and Sunnis linked to Mr. Hussein's ousted Baath party.
Mr. Maliki defended his political horse trading with rival factions, many of which are seen as far apart on several substantial policy issues. He called the post-election process�in which he managed to prevail despite his own party bloc failing to gain the most votes�"very arduous."
He acknowledged that he expanded the number of cabinet seats just to placate the squabbling parties that he eventually cobbled together into his governing coalition, arguably the broadest since the fall of Mr. Hussein.
"I mean seven to eight ministries are, allow me to say, ministries for appeasement purposes," he said.
Mr. Maliki said he agreed to several Kurdish demands, including a referendum in contested northern regions, though he didn't think it was feasible without a constitutional amendment to accompany it.
Washington is so concerned about the standoff in the north�where Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and smaller ethnic groups have faced off�that a large contingent of U.S. soldiers continues to staff joint security checkpoints there, as diplomats work on political solutions.
The referendum was one of 19 demands made by Kurdish President Masoud Barzani in exchange for a power-sharing deal that ended the gridlock that followed the March elections. The resulting unity government headed by Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, includes Kurds and a Sunni-dominated bloc headed by the secular Shiite and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Mr. Allawi, whose bloc won the most seats in the election but couldn't form a majority, will chair a new National Council for Higher Policies, but won't be able to implement policies without broad government support.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
There are persistent rumors on the street that the U.S. has ulterior motives in Iraq, and wants to stay to keep a better foothold in the Middle East instead of as a backstop to Iraq�s national defenses.
U.S. officials reject that outright, saying they have no desire or plan for a permanent military footprint in the country.
Maybe, just maybe, there's a conflict of interest here? LMAO
My how trump would legitimize the war for oil thang lol
Son of a liberal: " What did you do in the War On Terror, Daddy?"
Liberal father: " I fought the Americans, along with all the other liberals."
.
