Military experts are warning members of Congress that the reemergence of Al Qaeda affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere are undoing U.S. gains and undercutting U.S. influence.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told Fox News, “We left Iraq on the edge of being stable [in 2011],” but now, “Al Qaeda as an entity is coming back strong within the region and is doing things to destabilize governments, which, at this point in time, are still friendly to us.”
On July 25, Iraq’s parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi concurred: “The situation is grave.”
President Barack Obama claimed multiple times during his 2012 re-election campaign, “Al Qaeda is on the run.”
In October 2011, then-deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough explained that Obama’s plan to withdrawal all remaining U.S. troops from the country had always hinged on knowing that “Iraq that was secure, stable, and self-reliant, and that’s what we got here.”
However, less than two years later, Iraq is anything but secure. As Fox News reported, “nearly 2,000 people died [in terror attacks] in April and May alone.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins
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