He shouldn’t have made the comment in the first place. Ramadi is part of Obama’s failed withdrawal from Iraq. Update to this previous story.
Via Military Com
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on Tuesday apologized to the mother of a Navy SEAL killed in Ramadi, Iraq, for saying the city’s fall last week to ISIS “is not symbolic in any way.”
Dempsey issued the apology after Debbie Lee, whose son, Marc, died in Ramadi in 2006, released an open letter demanding an apology for “the families whose loved ones’ blood was shed in Ramadi.”
“I’ve read your letter, and I do apologize if I’ve added to your grief,” Dempsey wrote. “Marc and so many others died fighting to provide a better future for Iraq. He and those with whom he served did all that their nation asked. They won their fight, and nothing will ever diminish their accomplishments nor the honor in which we hold their service.” Dempsey wrote Lee in a personal note.
“We are in a different fight now, with a different enemy, and with a different relationship with the Government of Iraq. They must determine the path and pace of this fight. That’s what I intended to convey.”
Lee told Military.com on Tuesday that Dempsey followed up his personal note with a phone call.
“After I got off the phone with him I did think the apology was genuine,” Lee said. She said Dempsey told her he was trying to explain in his Pentagon press briefing that Ramadi was not a city that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) considered significant for its campaign.
For her part, Lee said she still does not agree with Dempsey’s view that what is happening in Iraq today is a different war against a different enemy than the one American troops battled through 2011. She also continues to believe Ramadi is significant because it is the capital of Anbar, the largest province in Iraq.
“I told him I felt [the war] was winnable over there,” Lee said. “I offered him my strategy – I won’t say what I told him because I don’t want our enemies to know it. But he said he completely agreed with my military strategy.”
HT: Woof