If it's Thursday, it must be Tikrit . . .

DonDiego apologizes. He did not mean his original post to be restricted to Iraq.

DonDiego fears many citizens misinterpreted The Obama's meaning when he said ". . . al Qaeda is on the run and Osama bin Laden is no more.” While he spoke and since, al Qaeda was indeed on the run, . . .into lots of places.

__They were on the run into Algeria where al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb conducted numerous attacks.
__They were on the run into Somalia where al-Shabab controls swaths of the country and threatens to retake the capital despite the efforts of an African force backed by the Pentagon.
__al Qaeda insurgents were running into Yemen after the fall of its dictator Ali Abdallah Saleh. US drone attacks have taken a toll, but al Qaeda is nothing if not perseverant.
__Ansar al-Din extremists ran into Mali and captured the northern two-thirds of the country in 2012 and ran back out after they were dislodged by French troops. [Wait a minute, . . . French troops???]
__Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, al-Qaeda's affiliate in West Africa, benefited from the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya by gaining access to his weapons, which are surfacing in al-Qaeda arms caches elsewhere. [Wait a minute! What well-known world leader launched an unauthorized attack against Mr. Gadhafi and was in charge when Mr. Gadhafi was sodomized and killed by the US sponsored rebels. Hmm, . . . it was The Obama. DonDiego suggested at the time ousting Mr. Gadafi was a mistake.]
__Forces aligned with Ansar al-Sharia are accused of running into Libya and taking part in the Sept. 11, 2011, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador.
__The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and the Jabhat al-Nusra Front were on the run into Syria and took over parts of northern Syria during the country's civil war. [Not so long ago the United States, led by The Obama, proposed to aid the rebel forces in Syria against the Assad Government. At the time poor old DonDiego suggested the US might be choosing the wrong side. It did. If, as reported, the US supplied weapons to the rebels, they likely ended up in al Qaeda hands.]
__ al Qaeda ran into Lebanon where the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham are accused of car bombings and suicide bombings.
__al Qaeda affiliates were on the run into Egypt after the Spring 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. [DonDiego opined the ouster of Mr. Mubarak was a bad idea.] al Qaeda has since occupied a neglected stretch of desert and mountain terrain in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula,that borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. The peninsula has remained largely lawless and has been host to continuous deadly attacks against government and security outposts.

CNN reported in January that "Al Qaeda controls more territory than ever in Middle East". They control more now. And they are about to control vast areas of Iraq and Syria.

DonDiego realizes all of this al Qaeda success is, indeed, President Bush's fault.
The Obama is not responsible for anything that may go wrong, anywhere, at any time, . . . especially anything having to do with healthcare/health insurance/the Veterans Administration, . . . military forays, . . . border security/illegally diverting guns into Mexico, . . . IRS political targeting, . . . or anything else.

*** EDITED TO ADD ***
Breaking news from the New York Times: Iran Deploys Forces to Fight al Qaeda-inspired Militants in Iraq. Hmmm, . . . which side will The Obama pick?

*** EDITED TO ADD ***
DonDiego apologizes for omitting the al Qaeda terrorist affiliates Boko Haram in Nigeria and Jamaah Islamiyah in Indonesia. It was an oversight.

Your "sarcasm" almost, almost catches the extent of your hatred for all things Obama, Don Diego. Thanks for playing!

"I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
I spent -- I've been there 17 times now. I go about every two months -- three months. I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. It's impressed me. I've been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences."
__Vice-President Joseph Biden, 2010

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
–Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003

Barack Obama is not the democratically elected leader of Iraq. Someone else is. And according to the neo-con ideologues (like DOn Diego) a democracy in Iraq would result in peace and set off some sort of chain reaction in the rest of the region. How's that working out? And would having more of our troops on the ground make Sunni's any more open to being governed by a tyrant that sends execution squads into their neighborhoods?

I'm sorry that Don Diego blames our president for the actions of terrorists and oppressive regime leaders. I hold people accountable for their own actions. Examples: Obama is accountable for bringing troops home from an unnecessary war. Bush is accountable for sending troops into an unnecessary war. And Don Diego is responsible for waiving his pom-poms while AMerica spent 12 billion dollars/month and suffered a million casualties in an unnecessary war.

"I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, November 14, 2002

PJ that is priceless. If you ever make your way to central Florida let me by you a good lunch.

DonDiego is just trying to explain what he meant when he said "al Qaeda is on the run." He is responsible for what he says, no? What does pjstroh think he meant?

DonDiego never favored nation-building in Iraq, if that's what a neo-con does.
DonDiego's hopes for a democracy in Iraq were never very high; at least they got to vote.
DonDiego has never owned pom-poms.

But why turn a serious post into name-calling against poor old DonDiego?

DonDiego presents a rather detailed series of incidents concerning the growth of al Qaeda, . . . and all pjstroh can do is call poor old DonDiego a "neo-con" {he's not even sure what that means]; says DonDiego blames Obama for the actions of terrorists [he did not]; and says DonDiego waves pom-poms [he has never waved a pom-pom, and if he had it was because he needed the money.].

One of us isn't making a serious contribution to the conversation.

Conservative WSJ writer Daniel Henninger

The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to al Qaeda terrorists this week is as big in its implications as Russia's annexation of Crimea. But from the Obama presidency, barely a peep.

Barack Obama is fiddling while the world burns. Iraq, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria. These foreign wildfires, with more surely to come, will burn unabated for two years until the United States has a new president. The one we've got can barely notice or doesn't care...

The big Obama bet is that Americans' opinion-polled "fatigue" with the world (if not his leadership) frees him to create a progressive domestic legacy. This Friday Mr. Obama is giving a speech to the Sioux Indians in Cannon Ball, N.D., about "jobs and education."

Meanwhile, Iraq may be transforming into (a) a second Syria or (b) a restored caliphate. Past some point, the world's wildfires are going to consume the Obama legacy. And leave his successor a nightmare.


Left-of-center Washington Post writer David Ignatius

Mika, those are harsh words from Dan Henninger at The Wall Street Journal, but I think there's a lot of truth to them. I found myself this week re-rereading the last foreign policy debate of the 2012 campaign in which President Obama assured the country that core al Qaeda, this menace really had been, in his words, decimated. Romney was sputtering that there was still a problem there getting franchises, they're still dangerous in Iraq. And that wasn't what the country wanted to hear. It certainly wasn't what the president was saying.

Now, 18 months later, we have a serious problem. These countries are just ripping apart. And I think the administration is going to have to step up and have a coherent counter-terrorism policy or it's only going to get worse. So we'll just have to watch carefully. But the idea you can go off and give speeches about Native American rights while this is happening and pretend that it's not dangerous, not going to work.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/06/12/ignatius_lot_of_truth_to_henningers_obama_is_fiddling_while_the_world_burns_column.html

I'm pretty sure that he meant that al Qaeda is on the run. One year and seven months ago. But things change. Iraq's fate, as the future home of Islamist radicals, was sealed the day President Bush gave the invasion orders.

And don't worry, DonDiego, I won't impugn your intelligence or character any further. You do that just fine on your own.