Fox News and their Republican allies have been screaming about the Sunni militant group that has swooped into Iraq, taking over parts of the country with literally no resistance and they aren't shy about been blaming the Obama administration, including the Pentagon for 'cutting and running' from Iraq.
All of them except for Roger Ailes' military analyst, former Gen. Jack Keane. He's been going on many of their shows and agreeing with their narrative that we should have left a residual force there, but he's also been singling out Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, for putting in his cronies in charge of the military and disenfranchising his political enemies like the Sunnis from the government. This stunned me at first, but he said it again to Bret Baier's All Star Panel Thursday.
George Will asked him how bad the Iraqi soldiers were after giving up so much ground so quickly to the enemy.
Keane: The fact of the matter is this army's morale began to systematically break down for the last three years, George, because of ineffective leaders. He had put his cronies and hacks in there and quite alarming, they have fourteen divisions in there. They number somewhere around 200,000. they outnumber these guys 25-1.
Baier: But it's hollow now.
It's a hollowed out, it's kinda like a house where termites have been at it for years and you look at the house and it looks good, but the fact of the matter is if you push hard, it'll collapse. The troop levels when the ISI approached them, the manning levels were around 50% because of the high desertion rate.
If the Iraqi military is unwilling to protect their nation from rogue elements crossing their borders then how can the USA possibly do anything to save them without another full scale invasion?
