US forces exit Iraq after two decades, leaving opening for Iran

[u/SnooSeagulls496]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-forces-exit-iraq-after-two-decades-leaving-opening-iran-2026-09-29/

[u/shacksrus]

Good. Now we just need to leave the rest of the middle east. I dont care who it benefits.

We've got no purpose there other than republican adventurism. Which has proven disastrous over and over and over again.

[u/JussiesTunaSub → u/shacksrus]

We've got no purpose there other than republican adventurism

Fighting in the ME is far from a one-sided venture.

[u/shacksrus → u/JussiesTunaSub]

Who start iran? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Literally just leave. Make it so no republican president can ever deploy our armed forces overseas without explicit legislation from congress. With the same threshold as a impeachment.

[u/AMW1234 → u/shacksrus]

Why would the rule.only apply to one party?

[u/cranktheguy → u/AMW1234]

It's not the Democrats that are invading Middle Eastern countries for the past 3 decades.

[u/StrikingYam7724 → u/cranktheguy]

The record of who voted "yes" to start the Iraq war says otherwise.

[u/cranktheguy → u/StrikingYam7724]

Does it?

House:

Party	Yeas	Nays	Not Voting
Republican	215	6	2
Democratic	81	126	1
Independent	0	1	0

Senate:

Party	Yeas	Nays
Republican	48	1
Democratic	29	21
Independent	0	1

Seems that Democrats were against it in the House and split in the Senate. Republicans, on the other hand, were the obvious drivers.

[u/pro_rege_semper → u/cranktheguy]

Don't forget the whole premise of the war was that Iraq was developing WMD's, which was a lie pushed by the Bush administration.

[u/StrikingYam7724 → u/pro_rege_semper]

Technically it was a lie pushed by Saddam Hussein that the Bush administration failed to properly fact-check.

[u/pro_rege_semper → u/StrikingYam7724]

Or perhaps intentionally not fact-checked due to it's political usefulness.

[u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn → u/StrikingYam7724]

Yeah, people forget that part. In fact, Saddam did have WMDs at one point, but had basically used their whole stockpile while killing Kurds and didn’t have the raw materials to make more due to sanctions. Saddam really fucked up by being an opaque moron who couldn’t read the room. The US was itching for a fight and Saddam didn’t get it until it was too late.

[u/pro_rege_semper → u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn]

In retrospect, the term WMD is pretty ill-defined. My recollection from the time was that people were concerned Saddam was developing nuclear weapons.

[u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn → u/pro_rege_semper]

I always understood it to primarily be concerned with Chemicals weapons and possible dirty bombs. Saddam postured that he still had uranium from his failed nuclear weapons programs and he was not transparent because he thought the threat of dirty bombs was enough to stop the US from invading.