DAVE ROSS

Whose advice to believe

Jun 19, 2014, 7:41 AM | Updated: 10:05 am

A column of smoke rises from Beiji oil refinery, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, June 19, 2014. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.(AP Photo)

(155 miles)

The latest poll shows President Obama has tanked on foreign policy, with about 57 percent of Americans disapproving. So whose foreign policy advice can we trust?

How about former Vice President Dick Cheney who basically said, “I told you so” in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed.

He did, in fact, predict what would happen in Iraq, “Leave that country before the job is done, would be handing Iraq over to car bombers and assassins.”

Cheney said that in 2005. About a year and-a-half after, President George W. Bush announced that Iraq was once again a sovereign nation.

“After decades of brutal rule by a terror regime, the Iraqi people have their country back,” said President Bush.

In 2007, Vice President Cheney also promised Wolf Blitzer Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki knew exactly what he was doing.

“Wolf, you’ve got let Nouri Al Maliki deal with the situation as he sees fit. And Maliki will,” he said.

And that same Nouri Al Maliki, exercising Iraq’s sovereignty, signed an agreement with President Bush in 2008 requiring all U.S. forces leave Iraq in 2011. Which they did.

So what do we do? Well since there are clearly people who want us to go back, suppose Congress does what the Constitution says: Take a vote so that each member can go on the record ‘for,’ or ‘against’ declaring war on the Iraqi insurgents that the last war unleashed.

I wonder what the promises will be this time. Maybe it will be something similar to what President Bush had promised.

“We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens,” he said. “And then our military forces will leave.”

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