Overcast with enough thin clouds for a occasional ray of sunshine to peek through this Memorial Day afternoon on California’s north coast — a chilly breeze, too.

War is on the mind today — during his annual speech at Arlington National Cemetery, President Obama did acknowledge there’s a break in the action, and the first Memorial Day in a long, long while where the U.S. was not “engaged in a major ground war,” although Americans are still in harms way in a couple of places still quickly going to shit.

And worse in Iraq. Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq on CNN disclosed maybe an insurmountable problem: ‘“First you should not dissolve the Iraqi army, and the Americans did dissolve the Iraqi army.”‘

(Illustration found here).

In comments, al-Mutlaq also agreed with US Defence chief Ash Carter’s criticism this past weekend the Iraqi army sucks after the debacle at Ramadi. Said Carter: ‘“And that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis.”‘
Al-Mutlaq concurred:

“It’s not clear for us why such a unit, which was supposed to be trained by the Americans for years, and supposed to be one of the best units in the army, would withdraw from Ramadi in such a way.”
“This is not the army that we are willing to see or we are expecting to see.”

This whole scenario is something we don’t want to see, though, maybe it was expected. Or not.

Odd how in a short political-space, the closeted recent history of an affair shrouded in so-much terrible ugly a lot of people forget the whole piece of shit — the invasion and disaster of Iraq is seemingly been cast in a memory hole for most Americans, the event so traumatic, thoughts on the subject appear warped.
Or they’re in denial — from YouGov (h/t Balloon Juice):

Americans’ memories of their own past beliefs about the 2003 Iraq War are tinged with their current feelings about what has taken place there since and what is taking place there now.
In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, just 38 percent admit that they supported sending troops to Iraq in 2003.
Less than a month before that U.S-led invasion, more than six in ten Americans* in a Gallup Poll indicated they favored sending in ground troops.
Republicans are among the most likely to remember accurately: today, two-thirds of Republicans say they supported sending troops to Iraq in 2003; in that Gallup Poll, 84 percent of Republicans were in favor.
More than half of Democrats supported sending troops in 2003, but looking back today, two-thirds of Democrats remember themselves as anti-war, and only 19 percent admit they supported sending troops to Iraq.
…
Looking back, more than half the public believes sending troops into Iraq in 2003 was a mistake and nearly half say withdrawing them in 2011 was not.
Despite the turmoil in Iraq and the rise of ISIS, the public has remained consistent in most post-war and post-withdrawal polls – disapproving the entry of troops twelve years ago and supporting their withdrawal four years ago.
Asked today what should have happened in 2003, by nearly two-to-one the public is clear: troops should not have been sent.
Republicans, two-thirds of whom recall supporting the war, are the only demographic group in the poll in which a majority now says troops should have been sent to Iraq in 2003.

In the memory of those fallen in those horrible misbegotten conflicts on this Memorial Day, this the way-worse from the Bush Administration’s program for waging their war — Don Rumsfeld, Dec. 8, 2004 ‘“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have.  They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”‘

Or, how about not at all, you psychotic asshole…