A top Republican House chairman on Thursday implicated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “disengagement” with Iraq for helping to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Middle East terror group.
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that the situation in Iraq is a “complete disaster” partly because President Obama and Clinton pulled out too quickly, leaving a home for the terror organization.
“We left a stable country and then it became destabilized because of a lack of engagement, by withdrawing completely,” the Texas Republican told reporters at a roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
Rep. Michael McCaul. Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor
“Mrs. Clinton went to Baghdad one time in her tenure as secretary of State for three hours in Baghdad. That shows you the level of disengagement in Iraq and that I think created [the Islamic State],” said the Iraq expert.
He said pulling troops out of Iraq has left a homegrown military unable to defend the country against the Islamic State.
Rep. Michael McCaul at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast. Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor
“We should not have done that. Had we had a residual force in Iraq, I don’t think we’d be talking about this. And we wouldn’t be dealing with threat of [the Islamic State] that we are today. We beat al Qaeda in Iraq,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
