Flashback: Mitt Romney on Iraq

It’s a pity, at this dangerous juncture, that America can’t send Barack Obama – The Man Who Was Wrong About Absolutely Everything – to the showers and replace him with Mitt Romney.  Obama’s foolishness has cost America and the world dearly.  

I’m not here to wave the Romney banner and declare the man infallible – he wasn’t even my first choice for 2012 GOP candidate.  But it’s amazing to look back to 2012 and see that Romney was objectively right in every major dispute he had with Barack Obama.  Sadly, America re-elected the guy who didn’t know his you-know-what from a hole in the ground, and now we’re beyond bankrupt, crushed beneath the weight of a collapsing health-care scheme, fighting a new government corruption scandal every week, and going back to war in Iraq.

Here’s a little tweet Obama dead-enders are wishing they could memory-hole right about now:

FACT: President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq. Romney called the decision to bring our troops home “tragic.”

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 22, 2012

Obama put it slightly differently when he formally accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, in a claim Politifact bent over backward to rate “half-true,” even though it was a blatant misrepresentation of what Romney said:

“You know, in a world of new threats and new challenges, you can choose leadership that has been tested and proven. Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did,” he said. “My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we’ve seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly.”

Obama then went through a long list of complaints about Romney’s foreign policy views, including this one: “My opponent said it was ‘tragic’ to end the war in Iraq.”

2014 readers can savor the bitter humor of this foolish and irresponsible teenage President, the man whose endless blunders set the entire world on fire, looking down his nose at anyone else being “new to foreign policy.”

At any rate, this is what Romney actually said:

“Yeah. A couple of things. One, you probably know that it is my view that the withdrawal of all of our troops from Iraq by the end of this year is an enormous mistake and a failing by the Obama administration. Secretary Panetta and others had indicated they were working to put in place a Status of Forces Agreement to maintain our presence there, so that we could most effectively transition to the Iraqi military and Iraqi security forces providing security for their country.

“The precipitous withdrawal is unfortunate. It’s more than unfortunate. I think it’s tragic. It puts at risk many of the victories that were hard-won by the men and women who have served there. I hope the risk is not realized. I hope instead that the Iraqis are able to pick up the baton, and despite the fact that we will have walked away on a too-rapid basis.”

So no, it wasn’t “half-true” for Obama to claim Romney thought ending the war was tragic.  He said Obama’s hasty pullout of the troops without a Status of Forces agreement was likely to lead to tragedy.  He worried that Iraqi forces would have trouble taking over if America walked away too quickly.

How’s that prediction holding up in 2014?  Where’s the needle on your Truth-o-Meter sitting now, “fact-check” sites?