Hilary Clinton has hit back at her Republican rival Jeb Bush over who is responsible for instability in Iraq and the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).
On August 11, Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush accused the Obama administration of a “premature withdrawal” of US forces from Iraq in 2011, with “grievous” costs.
Hillary Clinton replied by saying it was Jeb Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, who, as president, negotiated a US withdrawal.
The US-led war in 2003 has been followed by years of turmoil.
Jeb Bush called the withdrawal of US forces in 2011 a “fatal error”, destabilizing the nation and setting the stage for the rise of the Islamic State.
“So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers,” Jeb Bush said of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who was Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
“Rushing away from danger can be every bit as unwise as rushing into danger,” he told a rally in California.
On the campaign trail in Iowa on August 15, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton responded by saying Jeb Bush “should present the entire picture. [That]… includes the agreement George W. Bush made with the Maliki government in Iraq that set the end of 2011 as the date to withdraw American troops”.
“I can only wonder whether he either did not know that or thought that other people would not be reminded of that,” Hillary Clinton went on.
Earlier in the campaign Jeb Bush was ridiculed for struggling to say whether he would have approved the Iraq invasion “knowing what we know now”.
At first, he said he would, then he said he wouldn’t engage in “hypotheticals” and finally he announced he would not have.
Hillary Clinton herself voted in favor of the invasion in Iraq in 2002, and has since both defended the decision and acknowledged she “got it wrong”.
