“The situation in Iraq is grave,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest conceded to reporters traveling with the president Wednesday to Massachusetts.
"There is no doubt that the situation has deteriorated over the last 24 hours," he added.
The last 24 hours? How about the last 2-1/2 years since we prematurely left Iraq?
Back then, at the end of 2011, following Bush's gut check to keep fighting for victory, Iraq was relatively peaceful with little warfare and an end to government slaughter of its own people with gas or plastic shredders.
And now al Qaeda is overrunning Iraqi cities as the security forces flee before them.
Yet the Obama administration is probably truly perplexed that a lovely Cairo speech to the Islamic world and a refusal to stand by those in Iraq who fought at our side against our common enemies didn't allow Iraq to work out better--or at least not fail until 2017 when President Obama could boast that Iraq was still standing when he left office.
I hope that the administration at least has the basic decency to end their charade that they "responsibly ended" the Iraq War.
UPDATE: Recall the White House boasting of how good it was in Iraq:
In a March 2012 speech, Antony J. Blinken, who is Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, asserted that “Iraq today is less violent” than “at any time in recent history.”
But the end of 2011 was the end of the Bush policy that President Obama had followed in Iraq. From 2012 forward, President Obama took responsibility for his own approach to Iraq.
And here we are.
