Panetta Says He Urged Obama to Leave Troops in Iraq - East Idaho News
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Panetta Says He Urged Obama to Leave Troops in Iraq

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getty 100314 leonpanetta?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1412330110993Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says in a new book that the administration should have left a residual force of American troops in Iraq following the 2011 military withdrawal, despite Baghdad’s refusal to grant soldiers immunity from prosecution for any alleged war crimes.

Panetta, who served as defense chief from 2011 through 2013, claims he tried to convince President Obama that some U.S. presence would be needed in Iraq to keep the government stabilized and prevent the rise of militant groups.

His advice may have been prescient.  Panetta was fearful that without American troops, Iraq “could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S.”

The U.S. is now waging an air offensive against Sunni extremists known as the Islamic State, which has overrun large regions of both Iraq and Syria.

Panetta also writes in Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace that the arguments he and others had with the president and his staff “occasionally became heated.”

Nonetheless, Panetta maintains that the administration was “so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.”


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