https://youtube.com/watch?v=6irMFEEyIqM
Leon Panetta, President Obama’s secretary of defense from 2011 to 2013, broke publicly with his former boss over Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in late 2011, saying he never had confidence in the country’s ability to hold together without a U.S. military presence.
“Back when you watched the Stars and Stripes being lowered for the last time in Baghdad, were you confident, in that moment, that pulling out was the right thing to do?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked Panetta on 60 Minutes Sunday.
“No I wasn’t,” the former defense secretary replied. “I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq. The decision was that we ought to at least try to maintain eight to ten thousand troops there — plus keeping some of our intelligence personnel in place — to be able to continue the momentum in the right direction.”
“And frankly, having those troops there I think would’ve given us greater leverage on [Iraqi prime minister Nouri] al-Maliki, to try to force him to do the right thing as well,” Panetta continued.
The last U.S. troops were withdrawn from Iraq in December 2011, after talks between the American and Iraqi governments failed to produce an agreement protecting U.S. troops in the country from local prosecution.
President Obama now claims the decision to remove American forces came entirely from the Iraqi prime minister. But in the past he repeatedly took credit for the withdrawal, both during the 2012 election and for some time afterwards.