Robert Burns of the Associated Press reports that the US will send an additional detachment from the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group to guard the enormous US Embassy in Baghdad after supporters of the Iraqi Shiite militia group Kata’ib Hezbollah broke into the compound and set fire to a reception area. Burns writes:
“U.S. personnel are secure,” added an official from the State Department. “There are no plans to evacuate Embassy Baghdad.” This official also was not authorized to be cited by name.
Gee, does anyone remember Republicans’ vociferous reactions to Benghazi? or earlier, to Iran’s seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran? But now Trump administration officials are “not authorized to be cited by name”?
Embassy Baghdad is a much bigger facility than Benghazi or Tehran was, and represents the US’s immense investment in Iraq. Because of its political symbolism it’s surely not going to fall anytime soon, but still! As Trump and his fellow Republicans continue to botch our presence in Iraq — they are not part of Iraq’s solution, they are part of its problem — Democrats should make them pay.