Vice President Joe “Foghorn Leghorn” Biden is in serious ass-kissing mode today. Remarks made by Obama’s new Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter that the Iraqi army was essentially a bunch of gutless pussies have caused howls of outrage in Baghdad. Carter ignited a shit storm during his Sunday morning McNews show appearance on CNN’s State of the Union and it is now left to Biden to clean up the mess. It is even money that joltin’ Joe will further damage relations considering his proclivity for running off at the mouth and saying stupid stuff that continually gets him into trouble.

As reported by CNN in the story “Biden praises Iraqi military after U.S. defense chief questions its will to fight”:

American officials attempted to explain on Monday the claim made over the weekend by Defense Secretary Ash Carter that Iraqi defense forces “showed no will to fight” prior to the ISIS siege of Ramadi.

The comment, made in an exclusive interview with CNN, was the harshest public criticism of the Iraqi security forces to date from the Obama administration. The United States has said local fighters, rather than U.S. forces, must lead the fight against ISIS, a strategy that has come under withering criticism as the terror group gains ground in Iraq and Syria.

The remark surprised Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who told the BBC that Carter was “fed the wrong information.”

In a Monday phone call with Abadi, Vice President Joe Biden “recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere,” according to a statement from the White House.

Biden, who told Abadi before Ramadi’s fall that shipments of weapons were being expedited to help protect the city, explained to the prime minister on Monday the U.S. was planning to ramp up training to combat ISIS truck bombs, which were deployed in brutal fashion during the group’s takeover of the Anbar capital.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials were parsing what precisely Carter meant when he told CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr that “we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves,” despite outnumbering ISIS forces.

I seem to recall something about the Iraqis standing up as we stand down or something along those lines but that was one hell of a long time ago and the place is still a bloody disaster and getting worse by the day. There are two schools of thought on Iraq, the one getting flogged the most these is that it is all the fault of Emperor Barack Obama who didn’t capitalize on the success of the “surge”.

The other one is that had Bush and Cheney not attacked and invaded the damned shithole to begin with and focused on going after Osama bin Laden and the Taliban that we would never have gotten into the mess in the first place. There is probably more than a bit of truth in both of these. Considering that the “surge” was nothing but a big public relations scam foisted off by the great General Petraeus and his political allies in D.C. to put a happy face on a no win situation it was only a matter until the shit hit the fan anyway. They should have just allowed Saddam Hussein to keep the lousy damned place, it would have been cheaper and the ISIS freaks would have ended up locked away in Abu Ghraib prison or dead.

What he have now is a quagmire and a pack of trigger happy loudmouths in Congress like Senator John McCain just itching to send more Americans off to die for bullshit. With guys like Carter and Biden pissing off the Iraqi leadership they aren’t going to be exactly rolling out the red carpet when it’s time for boots on the ground again.