Thursday, Senator Carl Levin (Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee) issued the following statement [Ava and I noted it in "The media rediscovers Iraq (Ava and C.I.)"]:
Levin statement on the situation in Iraq
Thursday, June 12, 2014
WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued the following statement today after a classified committee briefing on the security situation in Iraq:
“We got into Iraq without adequate consideration for the consequences. What is required now is thoughtful consideration of our options, none of which, typically for the Middle East, is obvious or easy. It’s important to keep in mind that a major source of Iraq’s problems has been the refusal of the Maliki government, despite persistent U.S. encouragement, to reach out to its Sunni citizens to forge a unified and inclusive Iraq. No action on our part can resolve that disunity. It’s unclear how air strikes on our part can succeed unless the Iraqi army is willing to fight, and that’s uncertain given the fact that several Iraqi army divisions have melted away. While all options should be considered, the problem in Iraq has not been so much a lack of direct U.S. military involvement, but a lack of reconciliation on the part of Iraqi leaders.”
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iraq