Panetta Blasts Obama: He Lost His Way and Created “Vacuum” for ISIS (Video)

Former Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta told CBS News last month that the Obama should have left US troops in Iraq.

“I really, I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq.”

Barack Obama pulled all troops from Iraq anyway – one of his most irresponsible foreign policy mistakes in US history.

But, Panetta was not done there…
In an interview with USA Today Leon Panetta blamed Barack Obama for “creating a vacuum” in Iraq for ISIS.

In an interview at his home with Capital Download, USA TODAY’s video newsmaker series, Panetta says Obama erred:

• By not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual U.S. force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort. That “created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed.” Islamic State also is known as ISIS and ISIL.

• By rejecting the advice of top aides — including Panetta and then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — to begin arming Syrian rebels in 2012. If the U.S. had done so, “I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting (Syrian President Bashar) Assad.”

• By warning Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people, then failing to act when that “red line” was crossed in 2013. Before ordering airstrikes, Obama said he wanted to seek congressional authorization, which predictably didn’t happen.

Read the rest here.

Video below the fold.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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