US military advisers arrived in Iraq's province of Anbar over the weekend to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting militants from the so-called Islamic State terror group on the ground there.
O'Brien, a former US infantry officer stationed in Iraq from 2006-07, dismissed the American envoy to Anbar as "ridiculous," saying it would do nothing to stop IS fighters. He said the move was a purely political one by President Barack Obama.
Meanwhile, O'Brien continued, no one has held Obama accountable for failing to fulfill his campaign promise to pull all US forces from the Middle East. Those who criticized US intervention in Iraq under Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, are now showing themselves to be hypocrites, O'Brien said.
A coalition involving forces from multiple states would not find success in Iraq, O'Brien said. The United States, which created the current situation there, should be charged with solving the problem.
"There's an expression: If you break it, you own it. We broke Iraq and we own it."
According to O'Brien, the solution to the current situation in Iraq is an "overwhelming force" of 200,000-300,000 American soldiers. The Bush administration should have deployed such a force when it invaded Iraq in 2003, he said.
"That's the only way the problem’s going to be solved. ISIS needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth."
O'Brien said when the United States launched its unjustified invasion in 2003, it started a war that is still being fought more than 10 years later. Around 500,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion of 2003, O’Brien said.
"Half a million people are dead. And they'd be alive today. And we did it. George W. Bush did it."
"America has destroyed (Iraq). There’s no other way to say it. Look at it. It's really a shame."
