White House rebuffs Boehner comments on larger US role in Iraq

The White House on Thursday defended the Obama administration's Iraq policy, following comments by House Speaker John Boehner at his weekly press conference that the U.S. isn't doing enough to fight terror in that country, calling its progress "threatened." "A status of forces agreement with Iraq should have been agreed to, and this administration failed to deliver," stressed Boehner. "We need to get equipment to the Iraqis and other services that would help them battle this counter-terrorism effort that they're attempting to do. There are things that we can do to help the Iraqis that do not involve putting U.S. troops on the ground." Boehner also suggested that Barack Obama's delegation of the Iraqi file to Vice President Joe Biden suggests that the issue is no longer a top priority for the president. "The United States has and will continue to have a vital national interest in Iraq," he said. "We must maintain a long-term commitment to a successful outcome there, and it's time that the president recognized this and get engaged." In response, the White House underscored Obama's opposition to the Iraq war long before he was elected, and pointed to the "political willingness" of the Iraqi government to deal with the upsurge in extremist fighters taking over key areas of the country like Fallujah and Anbar provinces. "When the president asked the vice president to oversee Iraq policy when they came into office in early 2009, that was widely viewed as a demonstration of the fact that the president took the need to move forward in Iraq and to wind down that war so seriously," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. "He brought it right into the West Wing and that is where it resides today." "The only way to fight ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is through strong coordination between the government of Iraq and local Sunni officials and tribes against a common enemy," he explained. "That was true late in the previous administration and it's true today." "That means Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, it means the various political blocs, and that is the conversation that we are having at very high levels with Iraqi leaders." Recently Carney had announced the delivery of missiles and surveillance drones to the Iraqi government, but Boehner appeared to be pushing additional military equipment such as Apache helicopters, sales of which have been blocked by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He feared the equipment may be used for cracking down on opposition instead of fighting terrorists. "We're going to continue to work with Congress to provide the assistance that we believe is important in this effort with Iraq," said Carney.