Editorial: What are the goals?

A death in Iraq is garnering attention -- and we all know how rare it is for the US media to pay attention to Iraq these days. Saphora Smith (NBC NEWS) reports:


A leading expert on the Islamic State group who had recently turned his attention to Iran-backed militias in Iraq was gunned down outside his home in Baghdad on Monday night, triggering outpouring of grief among Iraq-watchers and analysts.
Husham Al-Hashimi, 47, was ambushed by four men on two motorcycles who shot him several times with silenced weapons, Saad Maan, a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry said. He was later declared dead at a hospital in the city.

He was a leading expert on ISIS. You figure he probably knew this violent outcome was a possibility. were possible.

What motivates someone to fight when they know it puts them at risk?

Don't ask most members of Congress. Don't ask Joe Biden.

But serving in the military doesn't make you appreciate life more automatically. Look at Tammy Duckworth, a US senator who suffered a real loss in the Iraq War but who has shown no initiative on ending the Iraq War and bringing all US troops home.

Despite this, she's one of the many on The Fright List -- Joe Biden's v.p. possibilities.

It's just another indication of how little leadership there is in the United States.

Simona Foltyn (ALJAZEERA) reports,


"The United Nations, foreign governments and Iraq's leaders are condemning the killing of a well-known Iraqi expert on al-Qaeda, ISIL (ISIS) and other armed groups."

It's a sad death. It's part of a battle and it's a battle for Iraq.

The US needs to leave Iraq. ISIS is not an excuse -- not a valid one -- to remain in Iraq.

The war never ends in part because the end was never defined. This has allowed US troops to still be in Iraq in 2020 fighting endlessly. That's not what the US military is for.

It's past time that clear goals were established and followed. You may remember that when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House, the Democratically controlled Congress (both houses) demanded benchmarks for success. If these benchmarks were not met, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted, funding for the Iraq War would be stopped. They accepted the benchmarks, they wrote them into the 2007 war-spending bill. And then?

Nancy and Chuck Schumer looked the other way as the benchmarks were never met.

To this day, these benchmarks, that the Iraqi government signed off on, have never been met. So if Congress ever had any backbone, they would have cut off the funding for US military operations in Iraq long, long ago.