Hillary Clinton thinks the Islamic State (ISIS) is a "phenomenon" and she would not put American troops on the ground to fight it in the Middle East, she said in a new interview.
Clinton, the leading Democrat in the campaign for president,
spoke with Univision during a recent visit to New Hampshire. The interview covered several topics, including the situation in the Middle East regarding ISIS.
"You know, ISIS is a phenomenon and ISIS came out of the terrible turmoil in Syria," Clinton said. "I personally had advocated that we do more to help the rebels against [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad because I worried that terrorists would take and occupy territory, and that has come to pass, not only with ISIS but other Al-Qaeda affiliates and terrorist networks. So I think the proximate cause is the chaos inside of Syria.
"The connections with Iraq and their ability to take over cities and hold cities in Iraq is the responsibility of the failed Iraqi government. We are not trying to help that Iraqi government, which is new and has moved away from the failed policies of [Nouri al-] Maliki [former] the prime minister who did not let us keep our troops there. And so part of it is we have to help the Iraqis get better organized in order to take on the threat of ISIS.
"I view [ISIS] as a real threat, I view it as something we've got to stand up to. But I will not put American troops on the ground to fight ISIS, unlike [GOP presidential candidate] Jeb Bush, who seems to imply in his remarks that that's exactly what he would do."
Bush spoke about ISIS in a speech this week and pointed to Clinton and President Barack Obama as reasons why the terror group has become such a threat.
"That premature withdrawal [of U.S. troops from Iraq] was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill," Bush said,
the New York Times reported.
"Where was the secretary of state, Secretary of State Clinton, in all of this? Like the president himself, she had opposed the surge, then joined in claiming credit for its success, then stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away."
A 2008 agreement said U.S. forces would withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. Obama tweaked the agreement in 2009, announcing the U.S. military would withdraw combat troops by August 2010 and would leave a transitional force in place until the end of 2011.
"So when Barack Obama became President I became Secretary of State, we had an agreement that George W. Bush had signed," Clinton told Univision. "And our efforts to persuade the then government of Iraq to let American troops stay for training and intelligence and surveillance, the kinds of jobs that we can do very well, was unsuccessful. But the agreement was signed by George W. Bush, not by Barack Obama."
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