Leon Panetta: We left Iraq too soon

[BigTex]

Excerpt from Scott Pelley interview on 60 Minutes:

Scott Pelley: Back when you watched the stars and stripes being lowered for the last time in Baghdad, were you confident in that moment that pulling out was the right thing to do?

Leon Panetta: No, I wasn't. I really, I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq. The decision was that we ought to at least try to maintain 8 (thousand) to 10,000 troops there, plus keeping some of our intelligence personnel in place, to be able to continue the momentum in the right direction.

Expect the press to be all over this tomorrow.



Not.

[planosteve]

Panetta was wrong of course. We should have left in 2007. The Iraq Study Group was appointed by Congress to make recommendations to the Bush administration. They urged a pullback and warned that we risked setting the entire mideast on fire. Bush blew them off and now we have exactly what they predicted.

[BillB]

We should never have gone in to begin with.

[John in Plano]

We should never have gone in to begin with.

yep

[crocmommy]

I agree with Panetta.

[GFB]

I agree with Panetta.

Me too..and I'd say it's the world's biggest...DUH!!!!!

[Red Oak]

The apparent mistake we made by going into Iraq is only made worse by leaving too soon.

Also I believe the rise of ISIS is more related to our support of the overthrow of Khadayfi than Saddam.