WAEX: President Trump Sunday said the United States would not abandon its airbase in Iraq unless the country paid billions for the cost of building it.
“We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as it flew from his home in Palm Springs, Florida, back to Washington.
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive airbase that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” he said.
Iraq’s parliament Sunday voted in favor of expelling U.S. troops from the country in response to the killing last week of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. It is not clear how Iraq will proceed in the wake of the vote.
The president did not specify the airbase, but he was presumably referencing the al-Asad Airbase in Anbar province, which he has previously said cost the United States a “fortune” to build. The base was originally built by the Iraqis, but the United States made investments to improve it after ousting Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Trump said the U.S. would inflict crippling sanctions on Iraq if it forced U.S. troops to depart. read more
Make them pay us back AND leave, AND do the sanctions.
$150,000,000,000 in cash, on a pallet, in an airplane. nothing less. If they don’t have it, they can ask 0bama, Hillary, Kerry and all the senators to chip in from the laundered money that Iran kicked back to them.
Finally someone has arrived that understands the world and died not do the bidding of the East and West coast.
I’m looking forward to the day we start vaporizing bad guys from space. Go Space Force!
Note to future presidents who take office after Trump leaves office in 2024:
This is what a president who has BALLS looks and acts like.
I think we should just pull out and utterly destroy anything we built there as we go. If anything is left intact, it will just belong to the Iranian mullahs anyway.
His scrote must be made of platinum.
I’m in the Biz and believe me when I tell you the upcoming festivities will be a proving ground for new weapons systems. Iran is now officially a test tube. Enjoy.
Why stay and let our forces be surrounded/sieged? Leave and impose the same sanctions as are imposed on Iran. Ain’t worth a spit of difference between Shias in Iran or Iraq.
After nearly 20 years and $2 trillion, will autistic Washington DC finally learn to never, ever help muslims in any way.
absolutely love this man!
… now that’s some effin’ Quid Pro Quo
in your face, Ragheads! …. yeah, don’t give a shit
Trump should recognize Kurdistan as a separate country, and move all our assets up there where they will be welcome and protected from the Shiites and the Sunnis. It’s the only part of Iraq that is actually functioning as a modern, prosperous society.
Only the Shia members voted on a non binding resolution that was boycotted by the Sunni and Kurdish. The PM is an appointed stooge of Iran and the world knows it.
This was an angry fart in the wind but as usual our Marxist Mad Dog Mainstream Media (BCP) will play it up as an anti-Trump revolution.
The US should introduce a resolution in the UN to declare Kurdistan a sovereign nation and allocate their funds to provide for a defense force to repel all insurgents. The UN spending US money for the Kurds to invite us to defend themselves, the circle of funding will never be broken, win win
Pull out. Nuke it. It’s ours anyway. They can keep the residual fall out.
Residual fallout has a mighty long half life, just saying. Just ask the Russians at Chernobyl about that.
Oh, come on.
Building stuff in Iraq was just another way for the politically connected to steal more from the American taxpayers.
Like that $45 Million gas station? Everybody forgotten that?
Most “foreign aid” isn’t: Huge money-laundering factory for the politicians and their ass-suckers. All the noise about Ukraine has been obscured but the facts remain: Obola, Biden, Jarrett, Yovanovitch, Embassy apparatchiks, Ukrainian thugs, and a host of CIA, NSA, and FBI spooks all got rich off the “foreign aid” that the taxpayers entrusted to the gov’t.
If the President believes that the Iraqis got that money, he’s sadly mistaken.
They’ll get an airbase out of the deal, but that’s small compensation for destabilizing the region and nuclearizing the maniacs in Tehran.
izlamo delenda est …
I remember when the Philiipines wanted Clark AFB back. Mount Pinitubo (sp?) covered it with 3 feet of volcanic ash, we said, “OK, it is yours now”, and walked away.