any US Troops were even in the vicinity? I agree that it is now Iraqi business and not ours so perhaps the troops were left in a witness mode in an effort to get the Iraqis to play nice. If so that was dumb, as the Iraqis were more likely to increase rather than decrease their use of force just to get one on the Mrekai. Regardless of whether it was a local or a DC decision it wasn't smart and wasn't fair to the troops.

Bottling up the MeK initially made sense but we had six years to figure out that they were not a bargaining chip with Iran, they were not going to overthrow the Mullahs and they were going to be a problem. We've had over a year to figure out that the Iraqis were not going to be nice..