In an interview with CBS News, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said ISIS became the threat they are because Obama dropped the ball. Panetta said that Obama’s decision to not involve the U.S. in Syria until it was too late and, in the case of Iraq, his decision to withdraw too many ground troops too soon, is the reason we are forced to confront a greater threat from ISIS now.
On the 47th season premiere of “60 Minutes” Sunday, CBS will report from Iraq and Syria on ISIS, including a discussion of who the group is, what they want and how it can be defeated.
“I really thought it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq,” Panetta said. Scott Pelley interrupts Panetta in the edited version to make the claim that former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi officials didn’t want a residual troop presence, but that is a claim multiple sources have told PPD is patently false, including Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
The former defense secretary said that the entire national security team urged the president to do more to confront ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, and warned of the certain consequences. But the president refused to listen first in Iraq. The same was sadly the case in Syria, where President Obama overruled all of his top advisors advocating for a plan to arm what — at that time — was more likely a more somewhat moderate Free Syrian Army.
“The real key was how can we develop a leadership group among the opposition that would be able to take control” Panetta said. “My view was to have leverage to do that we would have to provide weapons and the training in order for them to really be willing to work with us in that effort.”
Now, the president’s plan includes a strategy to arm the Syrian rebels, however, there is little agreement on how to properly vet the rebels but much agreement that they cannot defeat ISIS. That’s true even with U.S. airpower supporting them and if they are even moderates, experts say.
Ironically, Panetta said that the president feared U.S. weaponry might fall into the wrong hands if he took the advice of what was a unanimous national security team. Most experts agree that now that the president has waited so long, the Syrian rebels are not the same force they once were and, ironically, it is less certain that U.S. weaponry will not fall into the hands of terrorists.
“My view was you have to begin somewhere.”
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The mistake Obama made was destabilizing the area by overthowing Qadaffi and trying to overthrow Assad.
This article is a lie. The Bush administration signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq in 2008 that established a deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011. And McCain and Graham are lying because Iraq's Maliki would not allow for an immunity agreement for the residual American forces and the military and President Obama would not allow a residual force without sufficient protection for the troops. Also, read about McCain's and Graham's meetings with the Saudis for America to fight the civil war in Syria on behalf of the Sunni Sauds.
That's a whole lot of spin to defend your guy. The date in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was always subject to change determined by "situations on the ground" rather than being set in stone. Besides, President Obama was not even willing to honor the number of troops outlined in the agreement.
He half-heartedly offered to give al-Maliki 35 percent of what the military requested and the prior agreement suggested.
But none of that matters because Biden didn't travel to Iraq in 2011 and 2012 with authorization to meet al-Maliki's request. Iraq and Afghanistan always demanded to drop the immunity agreement during the first round of negotiations, but the difference, was in the willingness to continue to negotiate on the U.S. end.
The Obama administration had none, which is why the president refused to take al-Maliki's phone calls before the fall of Fallujah. At that point, he was begging us to keep a troop presence and Obama said no.