Former national security adviser John Bolton alleges that President Trump said in a briefing, “I don’t care if ISIS comes back into Iraq.”
Bolton, in his new book, The Room Where It Happened, recounted a discussion with Trump in May of last year, where the president expressed concerns over the continuing presence of the United States in Iraq. “Why don’t we take them out? In Syria, we got rid of ISIS,” the president allegedly stated.
Bolton continued, “What I heard next was shocking, but I distinctly remember hearing him say, ‘I don’t care if ISIS comes back into Iraq.'”
This would not be the first time Trump has expressed his desire to bring troops home from the Middle East and elsewhere. In October, the president ordered troops out of northern Syria. On Monday, Trump confirmed that he would be ordering thousands of troops be removed from a “delinquent” Germany. In a deal with the Taliban, signed at the end of February, the U.S. agreed that it would remove all of its remaining forces from Afghanistan.
In Iraq, however, the Trump administration has taken a different approach. In early January, after the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq’s capital city, Trump insisted that American troops would remain in the country despite protests from many of its leaders.
The president insisted that a withdrawal would be the “worst thing to happen to Iraq.”
While ISIS has largely been defeated, its forces remain a threat, and it seems the terrorist group is using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to ramp up attacks. Qubad Talabani, deputy prime minister of the northern Kurdish region of Iraq, says, “It’s a real threat.” He asserted, “They are mobilizing and killing us in the north, and they will start hitting Baghdad soon.”
Trump has wholly denied the claims in Bolton’s book, calling them a “compilation of lies and made up stories.”
