Cat, I know I’m addressing something else in your post now, but when administrations come up with timetables that put things off until after their presidency, it means they are washing their hands of it. It doesn’t mean that those timetables are binding. This happened with the deficit reduction negotiations and the debt ceiling fiasco in 2011.

It’s all political fudging.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that because Bush had negotiated for an Iraq pullout in 2011, that Obama was bound by that. He could have done whatever he wanted, as he often did. So I think that’s kind of a dubious claim.

I don’t think there’s much doubt that Obama had campaigned on ending the Iraq War, and they wanted the publicity of doing so. That’s why they made a big PR deal of it, even when many American service personnel still remained in the country.