In a 60 Minutes interview set to air Sunday night, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says that President Obama should have left a residual force to “continue the momentum” America had going for itself in Iraq, and that he wasn’t confident that pulling out was the right move for America:
Panetta: “We gave them a chance. I mean, no one could guarantee that Iraq would be able to go in the right direction, but we gave them a chance. We gave them the tools.”
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?”
Panetta: “No I wasn’t. I really thought it was important to maintain a presence in Iraq. The decision was that we outta at least try to maintain 8,000-10,000 U.S. troops there. Plus, keeping some of our intelligence personnel in place to be able to continue the momentum we had in the right direction.”
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Panetta: “The real key was how do we develop a leadership group among the opposition that would be able to take control, and my view was to have leverage to do that. We would have to provide the weapons and the training in order for them to really be willing to work with us in that effort.”
Pelley: “But with virtually his entire national security team unanimous on this, that’s not the decision the president made.”
Panetta: “I think the president’s concern, and I understand it, was that he had a fear that if we started providing weapons, we wouldn’t know where those weapons would wind up. My view was that we need to begin somewhere.”